Adam Young's University Days
by Igorina
Summary: When the time comes for Adam to attend the University of Tadfield the representatives of heaven and hell find themselves squaring off on campus. Crossover with Harry Potter. Pairings include BrianxWensleydale, CrowleyxAziraphale and AdamxPepper.
1. The Beginning

Disclaimer: I own none of the characters, settings or inanimate objects to be found herein.

When Adam Young turned sixteen he started to think about the future. Not, as some might suppose, the future of the planet. After all, it seemed to him that asking somebody who was half–way through their GCSE's and hadn't even had a proper girlfriend yet to referee the grand pissing contest between heaven and hell was a tad unfair, even if they did happen to be an antichrist. No, when Adam Young was sixteen, he started to think about what the future would hold for The Them once they'd finished their A levels.

They could take a gap year, of course; it would be their first chance to explore parts of the world that weren't on their parents' list of respectable holiday destinations. But what then? University seemed like the obvious answer. The thing that worried Adam about this was the fact that university probably meant the four of them going to different places. Pepper had been talking about how Lancaster had one of the best Sociology departments in the country, whilst Wensleydale was already making enquiries as to whether the US would be a better place to study Computer Science than Britain, and Brian, not being the most academically inclined of people, seemed to be seriously questioning whether he'd be able to get in anywhere, let alone somewhere classified as 'prestigious' or 'world class'. The ideal scenario, as far as Adam was concerned, would be if somebody decided to build a top notch university in the Tadfield area, which would, against all odds - and possibly due to some sort of clerical error - admit Brian.

If you were to ask the members of the Tadfield Borough Council exactly how the idea of building a world class centre of learning excellence in an area of wasteland just north of Upper Tadfield came about, none would find themselves able to give you a clear and coherent answer. They were also a bit hazy as to where the funding for the project was coming from. Nonetheless, on June 16th 2002 – and in one of the most astoundingly quick and efficient moves from planning to building in recent British history – the construction company broke ground. There were inevitably many residents in the area who were upset about this move by the authorities to invite – or incite, depending on how you looked at it - several thousand young people to relocate to the area. Mr. RP Tyler wrote a seven page letter to every major newspaper in the country, which rambled at length about irresponsible town planning, NHS waiting lists, immigration, the state of Britain's roads and why National Service and the cane ought to be reintroduced. Nobody at any of the papers receiving the diatribe could divine quite what the upshot of the letter was supposed to be, but The Daily Mail published it anyway on the grounds that it contained something for nearly all of the regular readers to angrily agree with. Still, after a while, most of Tadfield's inhabitants agreed, albeit grudgingly, that this particular building project was remarkable in the lack of inconvenience and environmental damage it seemed to be causing. Indeed, when a certain pale, light-haired young man named Mr. White arrived to work on the site, he quickly found it impossible to locate a chink in the eco friendly working practises of Harvis Construction LTD and promptly moved on to greener pastures that were more susceptible to chemical seepage.

----------

"I've got in." The level of elation and relief in Brian's voice as he waved the letter of acceptance aloft was infectious and Adam and Pepper found themselves whooping and cheering with him. Adam was well aware that Brian only had a place on the BSc Environmental Science course owing to a blip in the newly installed computerised enrolment system rather than, as Brian thought, because the tutors could see past his two A levels at grade E and the misspelled personal statement. He wasn't however about to mention this to his friend.

The three of them were sitting in Brian's parents' front room, tanned, tired and feeling slightly giddy. They'd flown back from Thailand the previous week after ten months spent visiting some of the world most exotic destinations and sleeping in a procession of tents, huts, youth hostels, cheap hotel rooms and in one notable instance a glass box(1). Their arrival at Gatwick had been notable in that it was the first in which Brian hadn't been hauled over for a search by customs officials.

"The thing is," said Brian, once the excitement of realising that he'd escaped being prematurely forced into the world of work had worn off, "does all of this going to university stuff mean we're grownups now?"

The other two considered this.

"Nah," said Adam eventually. "My dad reckons that you're not a proper adult until you've graduated and got a sensible job." By 'my dad' he of course meant Mr. Young. He wasn't quite sure about what his 'other' father would have had to say on the issue.

Brian looked relieved. "That's alright then. We don't leave for another three years."

"And there's always postgraduate study," said Pepper.

"Yeah, but then you'd have to do loads of work. My cousin Paula said that her dissertation was twenty thousand words long."

"So was your story The Amazing Adventures of the Outstanding Mr. Platypus."

"It doesn't count if you're stoned when you write it thought. And the last time I wrote an essay when I was stoned Mr. Luton demanded to know what I thought that the music of Green Day had to do with abnormal cell division."

"What did you tell him?"

"That I was stoned when I wrote it. Nothing else I could say. Of course, that was when my parents made me go and see that TV therapist, you know, Dr. Darryl Birkett."

"It didn't work then I take it?"

"What, the counselling? "

"Well, given the number of illicit substances I've seen you take over the last year, I'm assuming that the just say no message was a little lost on you."

"Pepper I wasn't just taking drugs. I was experiencing the local culture in a non-oppressive non-imperialistic way."

"Yes, but most people would say that drinking every hallucinogenic concoction that some bloke who lives in a Peruvian cave gives to you, at once, isn't a good idea."

"It wasn't as though you didn't do any experimenting yourself," said Brian, clearly deciding that attack was the best form of defence.

"At least I knew what I was taking. And I know my limits, unlike you and Wensley."

At the mention of Wensleydale's name Brian seemed to tense.

"We should go and see him," said Adam, suddenly sounding rather serious.

"Who?" said Pepper, the response delivered a little too quickly for ignorance to be believed.

"Wensley. We haven't spoken to him since we got back from the airport."

"Well, it was him who was being off with us. Though I'm not letting you off the hook Brian, you're being a bloody idiot about things too."

"It wasn't my fault," said Brian, face falling. "Well, I suppose it was my fault for well… you know. Though it was kind of him that started it. But afterwards he just stopped talking to me. Pretending that nothing had happened. And then he caught the first plane home as soon as we reached Lima."

"Pretending nothing happened?" said Pepper, snorting incredulously. "That's rich. The pair of you must have managed to wake up the whole campsite."

"I think that was the problem. Well, that and the fact that you wouldn't stop making comments the day after."

Pepper bristled. "But you'd both have made comments if it was me and Adam shagging in a tent in the middle of the Andes."

The mention of himself, Pepper and shagging within the same sentence was enough to induce several interesting, downright explicit and not entirely unwelcome images in Adam's mind. Still, he told himself, as Brian, who had just moments ago been so thoroughly ecstatic about getting into university, slumped miserably on the chintz sofa, if this whole mess showed anything, it was that getting involved with your friends in 'that' way was invariably an extremely bad idea

"It's not the same. You know that Wensley doesn't like talking about personal things. Besides, it's not as if your mum would throw you out of the house if she found out that you liked girls instead of boys, is it?" It was, as far as Adam was concerned, disconcerting at the very least to hear Brian sounding so serious. Pepper, needless to say, was already on the verge of righteous indignation.

"You mean that his mum would?" she demanded.

"Well, you know what she's like."

"Yeah, a complete cow, that's what."

Once The Them had entered their teenage years Wensleydale's mother had made it abundantly clear that she thought that the other three were a terrible influence on him. In all fairness however, this had come about soon after Brian had been suspended from school after two bouts of apparent pyromania, Pepper had broken Carl Porter's nose and Adam had been observed conversing with numerous unsavoury types on the village green(2). Pepper, of course, had been the most outspokenly furious about not being seen as a fit acquaintance for Mrs. Wensleydale's only son.

"We should still go and see him," said Adam, spying imminent conversation derailment in the form of Pepper and Brian both launching into protracted diatribes on the subject of Wensley's mother, and the general unlikability thereof.

"I know," said Brian. "Why don't you and Pepper talk to him first?"

"You mean that you want me and Adam to sort it all out for you?" said Pepper, eyes threatening to start rolling at any moment.

Brian appeared to think about this for some time. "Yeah," he said, eventually. "I mean, if you wouldn't mind, that is."

"You can't go through life expecting other people to sort out your problems for you, you know. In fact, I think that we should all go to Wensley's house right now and sort things out."

The expression on Brian's face suggested that the thought of 'sorting things out' was inducing around the same level of apprehension as the prospect of, say, sitting in a piranha infested paddling pool for twenty minutes. Nevertheless, the fact that he got up, mumbled something about needing to change his clothes first and headed upstairs, implied that the thought of having Pepper be vocally disapproving at him held marginally more terror.

It may or may not have been of comfort to Brian to know that several hundred miles away in Mayfair a certain demon was having equally fraught afternoon. Crowley's day had started well enough; with a quarter of an hour's worth of light hacking ensuring that every e-mail address on an evangelical Christian mailing list was flooded with a deluge of some of the kinkiest pornography that the internet had to offer, and a quick jaunt to the Harrods' food court yielding an irresistible opportunity to invalidate every credit card within a half-mile radius. On returning to his flat however he had found two letters awaiting him. The first, which took the form of an old bit of parchment stuffed into a grubby brown envelope, informed him that in recognition of recent successes his monthly tempting targets had been doubled and that any failure to meet said targets would be met with a swift and thorough review of all his activities over the previous one-hundred years, with special attention to previously uninvestigated failures in apocalyptical planning and protocols. As the parchment spontaneously combusted in his hands, he loudly cursed hell's personnel department and silently bemoaned the loss of the four month snooze he'd had planned for the remainder of the year. The second letter bore the logo of The University of Tadfield. He'd heard about the place on the news, of course; and the lack of legal wrangling, planning disasters, fund misappropriation or any other hiccups that would normally accompany a project of that size and scale had served to consolidate his suspicions that the enterprise was receiving a very special kind of help. Still, he was rather surprised to be receiving a letter from the institution. He was even more surprised – not to mention horrified - when he opened the crisp white envelope and read the contents.

Twenty minutes later a bookshop dwelling angel found his mid-afternoon reading rudely interrupted by an angry phone call from an irate demon.

"My dear," he said as, on the other end of the line, Crowley launched into a tirade of furious accusations, "I can assure you that none of this is my doing."

"Who else would sign me up for the post of student advisor?" demanded Crowley, clearly seething. "Bet you thought it would be a brilliant joke didn't you? Let's force Crowley to interact with a bunch of miserable, unwashed students, that'll be good for a laugh."

Aziraphale sighed in an exceedingly put upon manner, it was near impossible to reason with Crowley when he was in a mood like this. "Do you honestly think that I want fresh young minds to be warped by the sort of advice you'd give out? Anyway, it's not as if you have to take the job, is it? I mean, you can always write a polite letter explaining that you have other commitments that mean you can't take the post after all."

Crowley paused for a moment. "What, you mean that I should lie? Angel, I'm surprised at you." Aziraphale could almost hear the smirking.

"Hardly. I'm almost certain that you have other commitments, even if they do mostly involve the proliferation of those terrible, educationally bankrupt children's programmes that have been all over the BBC lately. Besides, I daresay that you not being there will make things a little easier for me."

"Easier for you, how?" The demon's tones were suddenly suspicious.

"I received a letter from The University of Tadfield this morning too. Apparently I've been made head librarian."

"What, Head Librarian? Why?"

"Your guess is as good as mine. I certainly didn't apply for the post. Though I strongly suspect that young Adam might have had a hand in it. He'll be studying there in a month's time; taking history, I believe"

"But you're not going to take the job, are you?"

"Actually I thought I would. The boy clearly wants us to be there." What Aziraphale carefully failed to mention was that taking the job would also enable him to temporarily close the shop and evade, for now at least, the pursuit of a particularly tenacious would-be customer who seemed to be intent on buying several of his more jealously protected tomes. "Besides," he added, with more than a hint of a smile, "just think of what an uncontested heavenly presence will do for the students."

"That," said Crowley, after a few moments of hesitation. "Is the most disgustingly transparent attempt at emotional manipulation that you've made in the last five hundred years."

"I take it that you won't be joining me then?" said Aziraphale, as he ducked behind the counter to avoid being spotted by the aforementioned tenacious would-be customer, who had just appeared at the shop door.

Crowley snorted in a supremely irritated fashion. "Of course I bloody well will. Can't have you being given free reign over all of those young impressionable minds, can I?"

Aziraphale had the decency not to adopt more than a mildly smug expression. "And the location means that you'll get to see young Bentley more often, of course."

Crowley muttered something that sounded a little like 'oh bloody heaven I never thought of that'.

Bentley Pulsifer-Device had entered the world seven years ago, shortly after his mother had gone into premature labour whilst on a rural picnic. It was, everybody agreed, a very good job that his father had managed to flag down that passing vintage car. The birth itself had been accompanied by a great deal of agonised shouting: all of it coming from the driver of the car who had been near hysterical about the fate of the leather upholstery. Anathema and Newt had made Crowley the little boy's honorary uncle, they had felt that it was the least they could do to make up for the trauma and severe nausea that getting placenta on the back seat had quite obviously caused.

"Really Crowley, you couldn't hope to meet a better behaved child," said Aziraphale.

"You're just saying that because the he was gullible enough to be impressed by your coin behind the ear trick. The kid's a walking disaster area. You should have seen what happened to my laptop last time I was conned into baby sitting; and don't think I've forgotten that you still owe me for that one."

"He just has a very… um… peculiar gift."

"Gift! It's a bloody curse. Isn't safe to let him within ten feat of anything with a voltage."

Bentley, for reasons unknown – and quite possibly ineffable – seemed to have inherited both his mother's psychic disposition and his father's technological aptitude. The net result of this being that he only had to be in the same building as an electrical appliance before it started to behave in a manner not covered in the instruction manual. There was already a note in the Tadfield Primary School register stating that on no account must any class trips to taken to the Sellafield Visitors Centre.

"It's not as if he intends to do any harm."

"That," said Crowley, in a manner that suggested he still wasn't over the complete destruction of his state of the art cinema screen television, "is not the point."

"Well, I really ought to be getting on with things," said Aziraphale, as he sensed that the threat from the would-be customer had passed. Crowley, obviously recognising that Aziraphale didn't want to be subjected to another half hour rant on the near-ruination of every single piece of microchipped equipment in his flat, mumbled a quick goodbye and hung up.

Aziraphale, relieved to find his shop no longer under assault from those trying to viciously remove its contents in exchange for money, decided that he'd leave as soon as was possible. After all, you never knew when a purchaser might try and strike again.

Back in Tadfield Adam and Pepper were quickly realising that merely placing Brian and Wensley in the same room as each other wasn't going to have the desired effect.

Things had got off to an unsettling start when Wensleydale, on opening the front door, had decided – for the first time in fifteen years of friendship – to firmly shake Brian and Adam's hands by way of greeting. Pepper hadn't been quite sure whether to laugh or gape. They'd then been led to the kitchen of Wensley's parents home, which could have probably shamed an NHS operating theatre when it came to hygiene and sterile surfaces, where he'd then proceeded to babble at length about football, C+ and the comparative merits of tomato ketchup and salad cream.

Neither he nor Brian seemed quite able to look each other in the eye.

"If they carry on like this they'll be on to DIY and weight lifting within half an hour," muttered Pepper, as her two friends discussed the trivial and appropriately masculine with increasingly desperate faux cheeriness. "Still," she added as Wensley, clearly scraping the bottom of the barrel that was meaningless conversation, launched into an assessment of the merits of the new Burger Lord adverts, "it's not as if either of us could force them to be sensible about things."

"And it would be wrong to do it even if we could," replied Adam.

Pepper regarded him in a slightly nonplussed manner. "Be wrong for us to do what."

"Force them to be sensible about things. Well, it would be wrong, wouldn't it?" For some reason Adam's tone seemed almost unsure, as if he were engaged in some sort of mental debate about the ethics of the matter.

"Suppose so," said Pepper, shrugging. "Though it'd be good if you could force people like politicians to be sensible. It'd solve most of the world's problems."

For some reason Adam didn't reply.

----------

All things considered damnation wasn't as bad as it could have been.

This, at least, was what Draco Malfoy told himself when the paperwork began to get to him and the rows of filing cabinets started to seem as though they were stretching into infinity(3). He'd been killed after running blindly into the path of an articulated lorry going at 80mph, whilst, in the grand tradition of cowards everywhere, trying to flee a fraught battle between the Death Eater and a group of plucky youngsters loyal to Harry Potter. Still, he was doing a lot better here than some. He certainly wasn't, for instance, as badly off as Fenrir Greyback whom he heard the Ironic Torments Department had had turned into a very small, fluffy lamb, or his Aunt Bellatrix, who'd apparently been sent directly to one of the Medieval Themed Dungeons(4), or, for that matter the Dark Lord himself, for whom the most humiliating of all fates had been bestowed. No, being made the most junior admin assistant in Under Duke Dagon's department was probably the best outcome he could have hoped for given the circumstances; even if it was stultifying, mind numbingly, brain crushingly boring. At least there were plenty of entities around to talk to – though he strongly suspected that most of them inhabited the bottom rung of hell's social ladder – and the department was generally acknowledged to be the best place to pick up gossip about the goings on amongst the netherworld's bigwigs.

"…. and Abbadon apparently saw Hastur and Pazuzu having an intimate loiter in an alleyway somewhere in Dis. Ligur doesn't know, of course, he just thinks that Hastur's been putting in more hours than usual at the office."

This seemed to cause a great deal of murmuring amongst the assorted demons, imps and damned gathered around the speaker; an incredibly beautiful, female-shaped creature, with serpentine eyes and whose job description had, until five months ago, been Dark Lord's Familiar. She seemed to have taken a liking to Draco. He put it down to having fed her snake form a few stoats during his last days as a Death Eater and living being.

"How'd you find out?" demanded an immense demon with six arms, clearly not as certain of the authenticity of these claims as many of the other listeners seemed to be.

The female-shaped creature gave an exaggerated sigh. "Because I overheard Belphegor telling Dagon about it."

The large demon seemed to accept this explanation. It was, after all, widely acknowledged that the ex-horcrux Nagini had the best eyes and ears in the Seventh Circle.

"Anyway," she continued, quite obviously revelling in the attention, "do you lot want to hear about Belial's snit with Lillith, or not? Because if you're just going to keep interrupting me then I…." she trailed off as a tall thin shadow fell over the little group. "Er… helloYour Disgrace, I was just briefing this lot on the new unhealth and unsafety protocols."

As Hastur's unpleasant beady eyes fell upon him, Draco desperately tried to think of a way to explain why he was standing around the blood of the damned cooler rather than dealing with the gigantic stack of Personnel Parchments that resided in his hands.

"Draco Malfoy?" sneered the Duke of Lurk

Draco squeaked with sudden terror and began to wonder whether now would be a good time to become a devotee of the Dobby school of servility.

"Ain't you the lucky one," Hastur continued with a leer.

"Lucky, your Gr- Disgrace?" The stack of parchments tumbled towards the floor as he started to tremble uncontrollably.

"Yeah. Gone and got yourself given one of them second chance thingies ain't you?"

Nagini gaped. "Him, a second chance?"

"Orders directly from himself," said Hastur. "Course, this wouldn't be 'appening if the whorecrux here had done 'er job properly." The Duke paused and looked around expectantly. "I said," he reiterated slowly and dangerously, "that none of this second chance stuff would be 'appening if the WHORECRUX here had done 'er job properly."

This time the assembled entities were bright enough to give a half-hearted titter. It was the pathetic, forced laughter of a group who'd just heard the joke for the eight billion and second time and were now heartily sick of it, but it seemed enough to placate Hastur for now.

"Don't worry though Nagini. You'll be going with him."

Nagini's face was at once the very picture of horror. "M…me?"

"That's right. Despite your dismal failure as Riddle's pet snake you're going to be this little bastard's case worker. His negative conscience, if you will. Keeping him away from the straight and narrow. Making sure that when he snuffs it he ends up back here."

"You mean I'm being demoted to… to…." She pulled a face of utter disgust. "I'm being demoted to shoulder demon?"

Hastur's sneer intensified to hitherto uncharted levels of repellence. "Well, these is modern times see, you don't actually 'ave to stay on his shoulder. In fact I've got another little job for you while you're up there."

"Another job?" she queried, in a manner that suggested she wasn't quite sure whether to be daunted or relieved.

"I want you to observe the movements of one of your serpent pals and report to me any behaviour what is not becoming of a demon."

Nagini appeared to think about this for a moment. "You mean you want me to spy on Crawly?"

"Yeah, that's it." Hastur nodded. "Course, if you was to report back anything what might get 'im sent back down 'ere for a lengthy period they'd have to send another snake up there in his place, if you get what I mean." With all the subtlety and finesse of a breeze block, the arch demon then squinted both his eyes, ostensibly trying to wink suggestively, but lacking the co-ordination to do so. "Anyway, I've got better things to do with my time than spend it around 'ere with you useless little plebes. Fink I might let Dagon know how you 'orrible little lot slack off the moment his back's turned." And with that Hastur turned round and skulked off in the direction of Accounts.

"Er Nagini," said Draco, once the other assorted creature and damned souls had scurried off in a frantic attempt to look busy, not quite sure whether it was the right time to talk to the now overtly annoyed demoness. "What's a second chance?"

"It's what it sounds like. They bring you back to life, send you back up there and give you another chance to prove your true worth… or lack of it, of course."

"You mean," said Draco, trying to suppress the jolt of hope that suddenly flared in his chest, "that I'm going back to earth as Draco Malfoy."

"Yes. But they'll probably put you in some kind of horrible situation to obtain a true measure of whether you're actually capable of nobility, compassion, goodness and all the rest of it."

"When you say horrible situation, what exactly do you mean?"

Nagini rolled her eyes, given that the slit pupils seemed to dilate as she did this, the effect was rather interesting. "Oh you know, living in a hovel with some kind of tedious menial job that involves back breaking labour and bad smells."

"And if I'm good I get to go to heaven?" he asked tentatively, feeling as though her patience might crack at any moment. Fortunately for him it didn't.

"You don't want to go there though. The filing's even more boring than it is down here. What you should do is engage in as much sin and debauchery as possible, while you've actually got the chance."

"But you've got to say that, haven't you?"

"Of course I do. If I bollocks this one up I'll be put to work in the imp crèche for the next six millennia."

"But if you get something pinned on that Crawl- I mean, that job stealing bastard who took your righ- wrongful place on the Eden thing, you'd get to stay on earth." Since being cast into the pit Draco had spent more time in Nagini's company than any other being's and it had taken him only a very short while to determine that the most effective manner in which to worm one's way into her affections was to encourage her to vent her spleen about her six-thousand year old grudge about not being the one who got humanity ejected from paradise.

She seemed to ponder this for a while. "True, but you're forgetting one thing."

"What."

"Hastur's loathed and despised me ever since I told a couple of Incubi I know in Dis about his holy relic dust snorting addiction seven hundred years ago, and it somehow got back to him. So it's not as if he'd let me stay up there, even if I did manage to dish the dirt on Crawly."

"But he just said that they'd need to find a new demon for the job, whilst making extremely obvious suggestions that it'd be you."

She gaped, before proceeding to look at him as though he were a complete idiot. "Yes but he's a demon. We drop false hints all the time. Anyway, you need to go and get yourself processed and I need to pack my things and get Tom Riddle ready for the journey. It'll be his first big trip since the form recalibration."

This time it was Draco's turn to gape. "But you can't take him back to earth, can you? He's a maximum security case."

"Of course I can. It's not as though I'm going to let him out of his little tank, is it? Besides, would you report me to Infernal Customs and Excise?"

Draco gulped, very aware of the malevolent things that could be done to his person was the slightest hint of thought in that direction suspected. "Er… no. I just thought that he might, you know, try to escape."

"Oh he'll probably try, but he won't succeed. After all, I'm a demon and he's a pathetic, failed Dark Lord who wouldn't recognise a competent plan for global domination if it hit him over the head with a sledge hammer. No he'll be stuck in his tank, shedding his skin and bemoaning the day that he decided that it would be a good idea to stick a piece of his soul inside me."

For some reason this statement caused the warning bell in Draco's mind marked 'famous last words' to sound.

----------

Zeliel had always been a timid sort of angel. He - as far as Zeliel could be considered a he - enjoyed gardening, quietly contemplating the majesty of God's wondrous creation and organising his extensive quill collection.

It was therefore a mark of how thoroughly incompetent heaven's personnel deployment department had become that he'd been assigned to the post of Michael's personal secretary.

There were times when he felt as though he couldn't take any more of the Seraph's brash righteousness and near constant smiting talk. He'd once considered falling as a means of escape, though the earth-bound angel Aziraphale had, after a long and sympathetic conversation over tea and biscuits, managed to talk him out of it, pointing out that the kinds of demon you got in the pit were often, hard as it might be to believe, even more loud, brash and smite-driven than Michael.

Right now Zeliel was being subjected to what sounded vaguely like a lengthy speech about how an angel always had to be ever ready to thwart the wiles of their vile enemies.

"They'll never miss a chance to tempt, Zeliel. We have to be ever watchful of their depraved machinations, prepared to strike down sin and blasphemy wherever we find it. Every soul's a battle you know."

"Er… yes, Michael," said Zeliel, nodding nervously, not quite sure exactly where this particular diatribe was going.

"Which is why you're being sent to the front lines. A damned soul's been returned to earth. Given a second chance. I need you down there using every tactic in the divine field manual to bring him back to the light."

"You're sending me to earth, alone?" As much as Zeliel had faith in the infallibility of God's great plan for all creation, the thought of escaping from Michael's direct supervision, if only for a little while, filled him with a tremendous sense of hope.

"Alone, into the thick of the action, against the machinations of a vile abomination, who'll seek to ensnare to once more the young man's immortal soul with her lascivious charms and false promises."

"You mean I'm going to be a shoulder angel?"

"I know it seems like a demotion," Michael continued, completely oblivious to the sudden look of joy on the other angel's face. "But you don't actually have to stay on his shoulder; and there's another task for you down there, one that I could only entrust to an upstanding member of my department."

"What is it?"

"There are concerns about Aziraphale. Talk that he's been engaged in certain behaviours unbefitting of an angel. I need you to keep an eye on him. Report back anything that you find suspicious."

"You want me to spy on him?" said Zeliel, rather horrified at the thought. True, Aziraphale had seemed a little strange the last time they'd met, but the thought of, well, telling on him, was almost too horrible and backstabbing to contemplate.

"No, not spy," said Michael, pulling a face, clearly shocked and disgusted by the suggestion. "I want you to observe your fellow angel in an honest and forthright manner."

Zeliel nodded, feeling slightly relieved.

"But I want you to do it in secret."

"Ah."

A file of gleaming white paper appeared in Michael's hand. "Now your full briefing is in here: read it, memorise it and prepare yourself for battle with the forces of evil."

----------

Crowley looked at Aziraphale's five battered suitcases in horror. Just an hour after he'd called Aziraphale, to slanderously accuse him of setting him up, Aziraphale had called back saying that it would be prudent to set off for Tadfield immediately. Crowley had responded by pointing out that as a demon, prudence was something that one generally tried to avoid. Aziraphale had, of course, said that he understood perfectly and that he'd just have to catch the train and that he'd actually be rather glad of having more time to prepare his heavenly itinerary alone. Crowley had fumed for ten minutes, before agreeing to pick Aziraphale up in the Bentley after tea.

"They're straight out of the nineteen sodding twenties, you know."

"Quite literally," the angel said, beaming. "They made things to last back then. Not like some of this modern rubbish that you get."

Crowley felt mildly offended on behalf of the sleek black travel case he'd bought from Harvey Nichols a few hours earlier. Unlike the angel he was travelling light, taking just a few of his best suits and his three favourite pairs of designer sunglasses.

"Look, are you sure that you need to take all of those manuscripts with you? You are going to be working in a library, you know."

"Oh, I'm not taking them for my own good, you understand. I thought that some of the literature students might benefit."

Crowley privately doubted the angel's intention to allow anybody, let alone first year students, to lay their grubby mitts on his precious books. It was, he thought as, for a microsecond, the back end of the car threatened to buckle under the weight of Aziraphale's luggage, a bloody good job that the Bentley's suspension was diabolically reinforced.

"Looks like we're all set then," said Crowley, taking an almost regretful last look AT their Soho surroundings

"Well, shouldn't we get going?"

Crowley gave a small sigh and turned the keys in the ignition. It certainly looked like the next year was going to be an interesting experience.

----------

In Lower Tadfield two people who'd previously thought themselves to have outgrown such childish pursuits, sat on an upturned milk crate in The Pit.

"Do you remember the Tadfield Inquisition?" said Pepper, finally breaking the silence.

"Yeah, you were the Head Torturer," said Adam, smiling slightly. "Kind of ironic really, what with all of those anti human rights abuse protest marches you went on last year."

"Adam, what are we going to do about Brian and Wensley? In four weeks time we're going to be sharing a flat with them and it'll drive me mad if they're acting like, well, like today, all of the time."

Adam shrugged. He'd given up messing about with things when he was eleven and it wouldn't be right to just go playing about with Brian and Wensley's heads, even if it would make everybody a lot happier in the long run. No, you had to let people sort things out for themselves.

An ancient looking frog, who'd been hopping about in the long grass, seemed to look at him quizzically for a moment.

On the other hand, he thought, if he just tweaked things this once and didn't do it again then it wouldn't be as if he'd be changing anything big, and it certainly wouldn't be as though he'd be changing Brian or Wensley on any fundamental level, and they'd probably actually be grateful for the intervention if they knew and…. NO, he told himself firmly, I can't think like this.

----------

The night watchman at the University of Tadfield's main campus had, on hearing a series of high pitched screams emanating from what was, in a months time, going to be the students union pub, rushed towards the building, fearing that some sort of brutal attack was taking place inside.

He was, all things considered, rather relieved to find that the shrieks were coming from a young man with white blonde hair who was accompanied by what one could only assume was his girlfriend; though given her apparent lack of apparel, one rather suspected that she might just be the kind of girlfriend whose company was financially negotiable.

"Is he alright, miss?" the night watchman asked, noticing that the woman seemed to be wearing a pair of novelty contact lenses.

"Oh yes," said the woman, with a faint hiss. "He'll be fine. Once he's acclimatised to the fact that he's a muggle who has to clean tables for a living."

(1) Which occurred despite Pepper's continual warnings about the dangers of befriending performance artists.

(2) One of the main problems he had encountered with regards to being the planet's only antichrist was the fact that hell's social climbers seemed to be forever trying to grab an audience and a photo opportunity. It was all rather annoying, especially when one was trying desperately to stay out of trouble, under imminent threat of Playstation confiscation.

(3) Which was, broadly speaking, actually the case.

(4) Though word on grapevine was that she wasn't entirely dissatisfied with this turn of events.


	2. Freshers' Week Cometh

As the car pulled up outside the Avonbury Building - named after a historic Tadfieldian who was famed for having invented a new system for filing memos sometime during the 1920s - Adam took a look at the place that he'd be calling home for the next three years. Given that this new home was only about eight miles away from his old one, this would not appear, to the objective eye at least, to be much of a change. But to Adam it felt like a bloody big one. It signified independence and self-reliance and, perhaps most ominously, having to do your own laundry.

"Now son," said Mr. Young, in a voice hinting at great discomfort, "This being your first week at university I think we need to have a talk."

"A talk?" said Adam, feeling his stomach churn with pre-emptive embarrassment.

"About girls."

Adam cringed. Not this one again, please. He'd received 'the talk' when he turned sixteen and again just before he'd set off on his gap year; and the sheer awkwardness of it all was not something he felt he'd ever be able to forget.

"Now as you know Adam there's going to be alcohol around, quite a bit, in fact, and there are also going to be girls, probably quite a few girls."

"Right." Being talked to by one's parents about 'that sort of thing' can be difficult and toe curlingly embarrassing for many people. In Adam's case this was compounded by the fact that the parent in question was, well, Mr. Young; who even wore a tie on Saturdays.

"Now these, er, girls, you might find that they're…."

"Look Dad," interrupted Adam, hastily. "You've told me all of this before. I promise I'll be careful and everything."

"Well, just as long as you're sure to take care," said Mr. Young, looking almost as relieved as Adam. "Now are you sure that the residence manager said that it would be all right to keep Dog in the flats? I just don't want to see you getting into trouble over it. It was bad enough when you tried to take him on that plane."

Adam smiled. "Oh, they said it was all right, on account of him being such a well trained dog." This was not strictly true. What the residence manager had really said was; 'I'll let that mangy thing into my flats the day he turns bright green and flies into the air'. Adam had heard soon afterwards that said residence manager was now planning early retirement on the grounds of job related stress. Fortunately Dog hadn't needed too much prompting to revert back to his usual colour.

The building Adam would be residing in for the foreseeable future turned out to be a cheerful red brick affair, with an interior that was very heavy on the IKEA furnishings. 

Despite Adam's protestations that he was more than capable of carrying most of his things in by himself, Mr. Young nevertheless insisted on lugging two heavy suitcases up several flights of stairs, to the third floor flat that Adam and his friends had been assigned.

"There's a lift Dad," said Adam, rather concerned by the fact that his father was, by the first floor, red-faced, sweating and taking worryingly laboured breaths.

"It's all right son," said Mr. Young, looking as though he was on the verge of collapse, "the doctor told me that I needed to start using the stairs more."

"But not with those suitcases," protested Adam. Mr. Young however was determined not to be swayed from his path and continued to plough onwards, in a fashion that suggested imminent heart attack and/or slipped disk. There was no choice. In a fraction of a blink of an eye, the weight of the cases was reduced by nine tenths. Adam may not have liked using his near-limitless powers, but there were times when one had to be pragmatic about these things.

Two minutes of suitcase wrangling later they came to a wooden door marked Flat 13, the lock of which, in the grand tradition of new security measures everywhere, seemed to be strangely resistant to Adam's newly acquired key.

"Well, it looks clean enough," said Mr. Young approvingly, as the key was finally - and with the aid of a slight alteration of the laws of physics - turned and the door swung open to reveal a white painted, beige carpeted hallway along which lay a kitchenette, bathroom and five bedrooms labelled A - E; one of which already bore a sign saying Pepper's Room Keep Out in bold and definitive red lettering; another, a poster bearing a biohazard symbol, which clearly marked it out as Brian's.

Adam's room was 13C, which was 10 ft by 7 ft and commanded spectacular views of the university's largest car park.

"Now you'll study hard, won't you Adam?" said Mr. Young, as he set the suitcases down at the foot of the bed.

"Yes dad."

"And you'll be sure not to drink too much."

"Yes dad."

"And you won't take any tablets or smoke any funny-looking cigarettes, will you?"

"No dad." On this matter Adam's word was guaranteed. His one experiment with LSD had almost caused irreparable change to the fabric of the universe.

"And you'll be sure to phone your mum at least once a week, she worries about you, you know?"

Adam sighed a little too exasperatedly. "Yes dad."

"There's no need to be like that Adam. We only want what's best for you."

"I know; it's just that you and mum shouldn't worry about me so much."

It was Mr. Young's turn to sigh. "We're your parents, we're entitled to worry. It's our job. Now, you're sure that you've got everything."

"I'm sure."

"Well, er, good luck son. Be sure to let us know if you need anything."

"Bye dad," said Adam, finding himself the subject of an awkward parental hug.

"Bye Adam." And with that Mr. Young walked out of the door with an unreadable expression on his face.

Feeling a small stab of sadness, yet not quite understanding why, Adam began to unpack.

Five minutes later there was a knock on the door.

"Who is it?" he called, quickly stuffing a pair of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles socks into the wardrobe.

"It's me," came an impatient female voice from the other side.

"Come in," he said, quickly checking that nothing he didn't want Pepper to see was lying about.

Pepper, whose red hair had recently been festooned with purple streaks, walked in and plonked herself down on the grey plastic seat that the person in charge of furnishings had obviously thought could pass for a desk chair.

"You finally got here then? Took you long enough."

"Yeah, my mum got a bit upset just before I left," said Adam, trying very hard not to notice that Pepper was wearing a rather figure hugging blue top sans bra. "She even looked like she was going to cry for a while. Don't really understand why; it's not as if I haven't been away before and I'm staying only a few miles down the road."

"That's mothers for you. Mine gave me a two hour lecture on drinking sensibly and using protection and all the other usual things. I mean, it's the same one she's given me near enough every time I've stepped out of the front door for the last three years."

"My dad tried to give me that one too." 

Pepper winced in sympathy.

"Is Wensley here yet?"

She nodded. "Got here just after I did. Went straight to his room and hasn't left since."

"So him and Brian…."

"Not spoken to each other."

Adam inwardly groaned. Despite his greatest hopes, the air of extreme discomfort between Brian and Wensleydale hadn't improved one bit over the last month. If anything things had become even more awkward; with Wensleydale making increasingly far fetched excuses not to go anywhere where Brian might conceivably show up. Pepper, being Pepper, had twice attempted to directly confront him about the issue; however on both occasions, Wensley, being Wensley, had artfully managed to skirt around the topic and change the subject.

"I wish there was some way to knock some sense into them both," said Pepper. "Or at least make things go back to the way they were before."

Adam managed to stop himself from making a statement about changing things like that being wrong. Pepper appeared to find it increasingly disconcerting when he started talking about changing the shape of the universe as if it could be done. Instead he opted for commenting on the surprising lack of loud music emanating from the direction of Brian's room.

"Oh, that's because he's gone to find the pub," said Pepper.

"But it's three o'clock in the afternoon!"

"That's what I said. But he told me that he felt a need to get acquainted with the campus."

Adam began to wonder if Brian's drinking had progressed from the territory of 'slightly excessive' to the point marked 'problematic'.

----------

In the four weeks since he'd arrived Aziraphale had grown to love his new library. It could not of course compete with the bookshop (with which he'd had a happy relationship spanning several hundred years) and was probably the bibliophilic equivalent of a brief and torrid infatuation; but this did not negate the fact that he had become attached to it. Especially since discovering that a number of rather ancient and venerable tomes were contained within. Unfortunately he had not, in his new capacity of head librarian, grown quite as attached to the other library staff; most of whom he considered completely unfit to handle anything of greater bibliographic importance than a Mills & Boon paperback. He'd seen new textbooks (made with heartbreakingly poor quality paper) shoved about, defaced and torn and elderly hardbacks brutally manhandled onto shelves located in areas clearly prone to condensation.

"Surely there has to be another way," he'd said to one of his new assistants, as she'd crudely scrawled 'to be loaned to psychology department only' onto the inside of the front cover in blue felt tip.

"Sorry, Professor Trentfield asked me to do it," said the woman, who had previously appalled Aziraphale by telling him that she didn't have a clue as to the proper procedure for rebinding books over the age of two-hundred.

Aziraphale had then proceeded to ask her if she'd jump off a bridge if the head of the psychology department told her to jump off a bridge. In reply to which she shrugged and said that it would depend if she was being paid overtime or not.

Such a lack of dedication to the noble vocation of library assistant had left the angel deeply shocked and according to Crowley - with who he was currently being forced to share accommodation owing to a clerical error on the part of the department organising on-campus residence for staff – disproportionately irate.

Still, he thought, as he critically inspected the rows of book-filled shelves, it was about to get worse. Soon the students would be in here, dragging journals off the shelves and roughly photocopying pages. A visit to the University of Oxford a few years ago had left him with no illusions as to the manner in which many students treated these receptacles of knowledge. He shuddered to think what was about to befall his library.

----------

Draco looked down at his Tadfield University bar staff name tag and almost burst into tears. He'd had four weeks to get used to the idea of spending the rest of his unnatural life as a muggle with a menial job and the awful truth was only now beginning to sink in. His place of work was a poky student pub decorated with the sort of furnishings that could be easily cleaned or replaced in the event of alcohol fuelled accidents, brawls and vomiting; and his task, as far as he could tell, was to serve the drinks, wipe the tables, collect the glasses and clean-up the unwanted residue of aforementioned alcohol fuelled accidents, brawls and vomiting. The only bright spot in his otherwise degrading and humiliating existence was currently in a small glass tank located at the back of the bar, between the Jack Daniels and Aftershock. 

"Nagini," he said, as he despondently stacked another pile of plastic cups – actual glasses being somewhat of a liability in a student pub - behind the counter, "don't you think that you should feed the Dark Lord?"

Nagini, who was wearing a name tag that proclaimed her to be Bar Manager, and not a great deal else looked up from the pile of promotional leaflets - all aimed at inciting the new students to ever more ludicrous feats of binge drinking – she was counting as she sat on a red faux-leather bar stool and glared, slit pupils narrowing, at the depressed-looking corn snake in the glass prison. "Feed him! After what that bastard did to me?"

Draco recoiled as the demoness's angry serpentine gaze turned on him. "It's just, er, that you haven't given him anything since we came here and I thought that he might be dying of starvation."

"You can't die if you're not alive. He's just a damned soul trapped in a corn snake's body, for the sake of torment."

"So I can't die if I don't eat, either then?"

"Of course you can," said Nagini, in tones that suggested that she felt as though she was talking to an extremely backward child. "You're a formerly damned soul reborn into a mortal body for the purposes of re-evaluation. It's completely different. I haven't tormented you once since they made me your case worker."

"What do you call making me clean the lavatories then?"

"Delegation. You don't expect me to do it do you? Especially with these fingernails." She flexed her fingers, each one of which terminated in a purple painted talon.

"You could always wish everything clean."

Nagini shook her head. "People would probably start to notice. Anyway, I'm really only supposed to help you out when it comes to sinning and misbehaviour."

"Whose job is it to help me with the non-sinning and unmisbehaviour then?"

The demoness shrugged her shoulders in a disconcertingly reptilian fashion. "Don't have a clue. But they should have turned up by now to tell you to mend your ways and threaten me with a good smiting. The self-righteous twit's probably got lost on the way down. They're like that angels, no sense of direction."

"So what happens when I meet this angel then?" asked Draco, wondering if the arrival of said angel would signal a way out of muggledom and servitude.

"How should I know? I've never done this before, have I? This is a demotion for me. By rights I should be up here conducting mass temptations, not trying to make sure that you prove yourself worthy of an eternity of damnation."

"I like the flyers," said Draco, fearing that a tirade against the 'job stealing bastard' was imminent. "Especially the bit saying: Student Life Starts Tonight."

Nagini gave him a small smile. "I spent all day yesterday designing them. Got to make sure they get all plastered on their first night at university, haven't I? Especially with all this talk about only drinking in moderation. Now do you think that I should halve the alcohol content in everything and induce wrath, envy and overspending, or double it and incite lust, gluttony and embarrassing mornings after?"

"Halve it," said Draco, fearing the mess that he'd be forced to clean up were the other option to be selected. He could still remember the state of the Slytherin common room after that time he'd brought half the contents of his father's liquor cabinet back to Hogwarts with him. "That way they'll overspend now and come begging for credit at the end of term, when their student loans have run out, which you can then provide at an extortionate rate of interest."

The demoness's smile widened "You know Draco; I'm really not sure why they sent you back up here. You're an open and shut case. You should be…."

Draco did not get the chance to find out what he should be, as an auburn haired angel, dressed in what looked like a beige Kaftan, chose that moment to materialise in a flash of holy light.

Nagini instinctively covered her eyes. Draco however found himself temporarily blinded.

"Um, behold I am an angel of the Lord," the heavenly apparition said in a slightly unconvincing manner. "Begone, er, hellish temptress."

"Here's your angel Draco," said Nagini, not even bothering to get up off the bar stool. "What took you so long, er, whatsyourface?"

"Zeliel," said the angel, looking as though he was completely out of his depth. "I, um, took a bit of a wrong turn. Look, Nagini, isn't it, the one who whispered in the ear of Voldemort? I think this is the part where we're supposed to have our first bout of wrestling?"

"Sorry, I've just washed my hair."

"But the handbook says…."

"Screw the handbook. What kind of succubus do you think I am? I don't just go around wrestling any old angel who shows up, you know? Especially when they can't even be bothered to exchange curses first."

The angel looked rather affronted. "I called you a hellish temptress, didn't I?"

"Yeah, but that's more of a job description than an insult."

"Oh," there was something about Zeliel's lost expression that couldn't fail to inspire a tiny twinge of sympathy in even the hardest of hearts.

"Look, I can see that you're even newer to this shoulder entity business than I am, so maybe we should forgo the usual posturing and gesturing and just get down to business."

Draco who had been watching the whole exchange with a mixture of amusement and annoyance looked from the uncomfortably confused angel to the bored looking demon. "Hey, I thought I was supposed to be the one whose soul was getting fought over here. Aren't you going to tell me what salvation has to offer?"

For a moment Zeliel looked as though he wasn't quite sure what to say. "Well, it's salvation."

"Yes, but in what way is it better than damnation?"

"There's eternal bliss, for a start, and inner peace and a sense of righteousness." From the aura of utter befuddlement that surrounded the angel, it was clear that this wasn't quite how he'd expected things to go.

"It's just that Nagini here's promised to give me my powers back and reinstate the Malfoy family to it's rightful – well wrongful – place in the magical world if I sign up for the damnation plan."

"I have?" said Nagini, looking extremely doubtful. "Was I drunk at the time?"

"Look, do you want my immortal soul or not?" said Draco, with a level of petulance that went beyond amusing and into the realm of downright irritating. It was, he thought, a cunning plan indeed: induce heaven and hell to pledge his old life back in return for his soul, before inevitably signing up for the salvation plan. Unfortunately for Draco, he was about as transparent as a plate glass window.

Nagini looked at him with a mixture of fondness and exasperation. "Tricky, isn't he? Trying to draw us into a bidding war like that. If that isn't proof that the little bastard belongs down below, I don't know what is?"

"You see young man, um, Draco," said Zeliel. "The path towards salvation is one of penitence and self-sacrifice."

Draco considered this for a moment before gesturing towards Nagini. "I think I'll stick with her."

Zeliel looked crestfallen. "Oh, well, if you change your mind I'll be at the sports centre." And with that the disheartened angel shuffled towards the door. As he attempted to exit through the shiny new glass door, a scruffy looking young man with messy brown hair simultaneously tried to gain entry. After several moments of 'after you' 'no after you' Zeliel finally managed to extricate himself in a semi-dignified way, before trudging dejectedly down the tarmac path that led to the east side of the campus.

"Sorry, we're closed till eight," said Nagini to the dishevelled newcomer. For a moment Draco thought that he was staring at an older, hairier version of Harry Potter, until he realised that this young man was a) taller, b) lacking in any visible lightning shaped scars and c) wearing a t-shirt advertising a Muggle band named _Cyanide Death Cult_.

"I just want a pint of cider," protested the young man.

"Look, sorry what's your name?"

"Brian. I like your contact lenses, by the way."

"Er, thanks. Look Brian, we're not serving anyone till tonight, so you'll just have to make do with getting plastered in the privacy of your own room, for now."

"But…."

"No buts."

Brian stood in the doorway bearing a kicked puppy expression for a while, before pointing to Tom Riddle. "That snake doesn't look very well."

"So?" said Nagini.

"And his cage's too small for his size."

"It's all right, he deserves it. Now get out."

"But…." Brian was shoved back out of the door by what seemed to Draco to be a sudden and highly localised gust of 150mph wind.

"Well, I must say that you didn't handle that one quite like I expected," said Nagini, as the door slammed shut. "Just one word of advice though. When it comes to angels and demons we don't all possess the mental capacity and reasoning abilities of Duke Hastur. In fact some of us can even spell our own names."

"So you don't want to buy my immortal soul in exchange for all of the worldly things I desire?"

"Buy you soul? You must be joking. I can see what would happen now. We'd install you as Supreme High Emperor of the magical world and then, after an eighty-seven year reign, you'd go and sincerely repent on us; leaving me with nothing but a thousand year stint in the imp crèche."

"Then why bother trying to tempt me then?" said Draco, beginning to fear that any handle he thought he'd had on the situation had been a complete illusion.

"To help you damn yourself, of course. Now, I want you to go and hand these flyers out to all of the young, impressionable fresh faces out there."

The seed of an idea began to take root in Draco's mind. "Wait a minute, doesn't that mean that I'd be doing hell's bidding? Because if that's the case, I think I should get something in return: like my magical abilities back, for instance."

"Yes," said Nagini, with a smirk. "You get to keep your job and the roof over your head that goes with it. Of course, if you'd prefer to navigate your own way around the Muggle world, then I'd be more than happy to let you go."

Basic self-respect should have dictated that he storm out then and there, telling her exactly where she could stick her job. But the thought of being alone, homeless and friendless, with only an inept-looking, platitude-spouting angel to turn to was too much to bear. Draco frowned and took the flyers from the counter and walked out into the uncharted wilds of the Tadfield University Freshers' Week.

As she watched him dejectedly shuffle out to meet her pub's future patrons, Nagini felt a small tug at the strings of her blackened heart. "Poor little bastard," she said to herself, before shooting another poisonous glare at Tom Riddle's tank. "Now then, what else can I do to you?"

The corn snake formerly known as Lord Voldemort shuddered in terror.

----------

Crowley was enjoying his new position as Student Counsellor far more than he'd anticipated. A host of subtle ways to cause small, yet festering, wounds to the soul had begun to open up before him. A month ago he was certain that he'd be reduced to hoary old clichés like seducing every reasonable looking virgin who walked through the door, convincing students of a devout persuasion to redirect their faith to one of the more ludicrous cults going around and having a small sideline in opiate sales. No, aside from the fact that Aziraphale had recently taken to wearing a slightly hurt look every time Crowley mentioned seducing mortals, students tended not to need any provocation when it came to indulging in sects, drugs and generally fucking around.

There were so many more creative ways to tempt and incite sin. The informational posters around the office, for instance, whilst at face value promoting health, happiness and other generally positive things, were specially designed to transmit the inescapable message that health and happiness were contingent on a unattainably perfect body, unattainably perfect bodied significant other, slightly less perfectly bodied whilst still fairly attractive friends and a designer wardrobe. Crowley was very proud of them. His time in the creative departments of four globally renowned advertising companies had served him well. There was also the manner of the advice he intended to dispense to the fresh faced undergraduates. The girl with the dead-beat, emotionally vacant boyfriend would be assured that all she needed to do was mould him into what she wanted from a man, and the politics student wanting to change the world could be warned that campaigning against injustice was a futile act, bound to lead to a life of debt, impoverishment and obscurity. What Crowley hadn't expected however was for Adam Young to show up at his office on the first day of intro week.

"Adam?" he said, at once feeling rather nervous.

"Hiya." An uncharacteristically downbeat antichrist flopped unceremoniously down onto the chair opposite Crowley's desk. "I need some advice."

Crowley's brow furrowed. "From me?"

Adam nodded.

"You do realise that I'm quite probably just about the worst person to come to for good advice, don't you?"

"Oh, I don't know," said Adam. "You've been around for longer than most people, so you must have picked some things up about how to deal with them."

"Who is it you want to deal with then?" asked Crowley, in the ever-so-slightly jittery manner of one who is fully aware that the person seeking his counsel had the power to obliterate any trace of him from existence.

"My friends, Brian and Wensley." He then went on to describe the tryst between the two that had happened in a tent high in the Andes and the fallout that looked as though it might just be about to end fifteen years of camaraderie and friendship between the Them.

"So I take it that you're not going to just snap your fingers and make them speak to each other again?" said Crowley, once Adam had finished.

Adam shook his head. "I wouldn't mess around with their minds. If I started doing that they'd end up not being Brian and Wensley any more."

"Well, that's good news, I suppose. Personally I'd say strand them on a desert island together for three months. That would probably get them to start talking. Either that or kill each other."

Adam gave a small smile. "I don't think that'd be very practical."

"Look, the way I see it you have to let them sort things out between themselves. But you can try and make the environment as conducive to communication as you possibly can."

"Will that work?"

Crowley shrugged. "Fuck knows, I read it in a self-help book. Somebody else's self-help book I should add. Got to keep my eye on the competition, haven't I? But the person who wrote it was qualified."

"Thanks for listening anyway," said Adam, making a move to stand up. "I think it might have been helpful."

"Er, good," said the demon, still feeling rather thrown by the whole situation. "Adam, why did you bring us here?"

For a moment it looked as though Adam was about to walk out of the office without offering any explanation, but he paused just before he reached the door and turned around. "I didn't make you come here. You could have said no."

"Well, yes we could. What I meant was, er…" Crowley struggled to find the right words to say what he meant. "What I suppose I mean is, why do you want us here?"

"Things are balanced this way."

"But you could have that if neither of us - me and Aziraphale that is - were here."

Adam shrugged. "I s'pose."

"Did you want us here so that you could keep an eye on us?"

"Not really. I mean, I can tell what's going on wherever you are." Crowley was struck by several rather terrifying thoughts at once. "What I mean," Adam added hurriedly, clearly noticing a sudden change in the demon's expression, "is that I know when you've both been messing about with things. I didn't mean that I'm constantly watching you or anything. I mean, I could if I wanted to, but I wouldn't."

"That's, er, good to know."

"'Course, there are other people here trying to keep an eye on you. But they're your people and his people."

"What?" Crowley's pupils narrowed as a wave of something that was comprised of 40 fear and 60 anger coursed through him. "Who are they?"

Adam told him.

----------

Brian took a sip of the mug of tea Pepper had just set down in front of him and almost instantly wished he hadn't. Pepper's tea making method seemed to involve letting the tea bag stew for nearly twenty minutes before adding a small drop of milk and hoping that three sugars would hide the bitterness. It didn't, it merely intensified the unpleasant shock to the palate. The flat's kitchen was a tiny affair containing a table big enough for two, five chairs, a small fridge freezer, a cooker, a microwave and three cupboards; and, in the grand traditions of student kitchens everywhere, it was already looking rather untidy.

"Poor little thing looked half-starved," he said, shaking his head. "I bet the evil bitch never feeds him."

"Brian," said Pepper, sounding rather irritated. "You can't call her an evil bitch just because she refused to serve you before opening time. And will you stop going on about the bloody snake."

"I can't help being concerned about the fate of other living beings. Of course, you're a carnivore so I don't suppose you can understand what it's like to feel empathy for another species."

"If this is going to turn into another rant on the evils of meat eating and the wonders of vegetarianism then I'm not listening. Anyway, have you spoken to Wensley yet?"

Brian felt his stomach lurch slightly. Right now Wensleydale, and the fact that the odds of them ever having a normal conversation again seemed to currently be somewhere between highly improbable and downright impossible, wasn't something that he particularly wanted to think about. "He's been in his room with the door shut all day."

"Why don't you take him a cup of tea?" Pepper suggested.

Brian shook his head. "Nah, I don't want to disturb him."

"You're such a wimp, Brian."

"No more than you are," said Brian, instantly feeling the need to defend himself against this accusation of cowardice. "Remember when you fancied Mark Brown in year 11. You couldn't speak to him without blushing."

Pepper scowled, clearly still embarrassed by memories of Mark Brown and the month of perpetual tonguetiedness. "Yes, but he was just some boy I had a crush on. Not a friend of over fifteen years."

"What about that thing with Daniel Kilner then; you were friends for months, but never spoke to him again after Samantha Prentiss's birthday party?"

"That," said Pepper, eyes narrowing, "was because he tried to grope me."

The argument would have devolved even further into high school anecdotes if Adam hadn't picked that moment to walk in through the door.

He looked, with an unreadable expression, from a defensive Brian to a severely irritated Pepper.

"You two want to go down to the students' union then?"

Pepper and Brian looked at each other for a few seconds as a wordless truce was seemingly declared on the matter.

"Alright," replied Pepper, with a shrug.

"Okay, just let me get my shoes on," said Brian, with rather more enthusiasm.

"Look, you know where it is, don't you Brian? Why don't me and Pepper set off now, and you can catch us up in a few minutes."

"Er, fine," said Brian, getting the distinct impression that there was something going on that he wasn't in on. Judging from Pepper's confused expression; she wasn't quite sure what was going on either.

----------

Crowley was furious.

So furious in fact that he was now pacing the sitting room of the flat he and the angel were being forced to share, whilst casting loud aspersions on heaven and hell's respective hierarchies.

It was, as far as Aziraphale was concerned, a most unwelcome distraction from the heartfelt letter he was penning to the Librarian of the Unseen University.

"Really, my dear," he said, as the demon came to the end of his fifth tirade that night. "We had always assumed as much. It was only a few months ago that you found those imps hanging about outside your flat. And I've been constantly beset by old acquaintances from up there 'just dropping by' at random intervals."

"Yeah, but that wasn't really personal was it? I mean, Hastur's got a grudge the size of a planet and the gossipy tart's had it in for me ever since the garden."

"I can't help but think that you're overreacting. Nagini really doesn't strike me as the type suited to covert operations against her fellow infernal types – unless, of course, espionage now involves disseminating as much information as possible to as many people as you can – I mean, just look at the Voldemort debacle. And as for Zeliel, well, one has to feel sorry for the poor chap. He's always been a bundle of nerves."

"So you're planning on letting them send back as many damnin- negative reports about us as they bloody well like."

"Crowley, they can't really say anything if we appear to be doing our jobs correctly."

"Well, yours might not, but mine'll try to set me up, just you wait and see. They'll be photo-shopped pictures of me helping sick puppies across the road, or whatever it is that you lot are supposed to do, before the end of the week."

Aziraphale gave a deliberately laboured sigh. "In that case, I can only suggest that you acquire evidence of some sort of wrongdoing, well rightdoing, on Nagini's part first."

Crowley seemed appeared to ponder this idea for several seconds. "You mean that I should set her up."

"That would be rather crass way of putting it."

"You know angel," he said, smirking fondly, "underneath that prim, stuffy exterior of yours beats the heart of a sneaky bastard."

"My dear," said Aziraphale, exasperation boiling over into a highly excessive and rather convulsive gesture of despair, which involved much dramatic arm waving, "will you please let me finish my letter in peace?"

"Why are you writing to him again? Don't see how the monkey'll be much help."

"Yes Crowley, it's strange I find, that you never seem to refer to him as 'the monkey' when he's in earshot. In answer to question, I'm writing to him in order to ask for advice on maintaining a functioning library in the face of barbarism. Now would you kindly let me get on with it? I believe there must be lots of things around here for you to do; it is a university campus, after all."

"But Azira…."

"Out!"

Crowley, in an excessive gesture of his own, threw his hands up in surrender. "Fine, I'll see you later then."

Smiling to himself as Crowley stomped out into the Tadfield evening, Aziraphale turned back to his parchment. Now all he had to do was decide whether 'uncivilized biro-wielders' or 'apathetic troglodytes' was the best way to describe his newly acquired staff.

----------

It had taken Brian a surprising amount of time to locate his favourite trainers. He could have sworn that he'd left them under the bed. Yet he'd eventually discovered that they were sitting on top of his wardrobe. Still, he thought philosophically as he waited for the lift to arrive at the third floor (stairs not being a choice of intra-building decent he opted for when there was an alternative), the pub would be open until 11 o'clock and it would be easy enough to catch up on twenty minutes of lost drinking time once he got there.

"'Lo Brian," muttered a rather quiet and awkward voice, coming from behind him.

He turned to see a mildly dishevelled Wensleydale looking studiously at the floor.

"You, er, coming to the pub with me, Adam and Pep then?" asked Brian, not quite sure what to say.

Wensleydale, still not taking his eyes from the floor, shook his head. "I'm going to the computer lab. Thought I'd get started on my first assignment."

The shock was enough to momentarily override the apprehensiveness Brian was feeling with regards to communication with Wensleydale. "First assignment? But we don't even start any of our classes until next week"

"I'm planning ahead."

"Oh."

For the next thirty seconds an excruciatingly uncomfortable silence fell between them. It was a huge relief for both when the lift door finally opened.

"Er, ground floor, right?" said Brian, trying desperately to avoid dwelling on the fact that Wensley looked extremely attractive with his hair mussed up like that.

Wensleydale just nodded.

With the press of a button the silver doors glided shut and the lift began to move.

Then the power went.

----------

Brian and Wensleydale were not the only ones suffering from an acute case of awkwardness and embarrassment.

Adam was currently wishing that he'd never set foot in the University of Tadfield Students' Union pub. He could handle the stares, he could just about put up with the fear, he could happily roll his eyes at the awe, but what he really couldn't deal with was the fawning. He'd tried to protest, he really had. Said that he just wanted to be treated like another student. Told her that he wasn't really interested in hell's protocol for such events. But six thousand years of infernal conditioning is not something that can be overridden in a few minutes.

"Are you sure you don't want anything else Lord: Gourmet food, fine wine, sexual favours or… or maybe…." Nagini seemed to be trying to mentally scrape the barrel of things to provide when playing host to an important dignitary, "one of those Ferraro Roche pyramids? I could get Draco to make one for you."

Adam flushed and shook his head. "Look, me and my friend," he gestured towards Pepper who was sitting at a nearby table and watching the whole exchange play out with a look of amazed amusement, "we just want two pints of cider and a packet of salt and vinegar crisps."

"Yes Lord," said Nagini, nodding with desperate obsequiousness.

"And please call me Adam."

There was more desperate nodding. "Of course Lord… I mean Adam."

Adam sighed. Dealing with most minions of hell was an uphill struggle.

----------

After ten minutes of standing in the dark Brian and Wensleydale realised that they weren't going to be rescued any time in the immediate future. There was the sound of workmen trying to fix something above them. But their shouts of 'what the fuck's going on' had been met only with only muffled calls of what sounded like 'sorry can't hear you'.

"Wonder what's going on out there?" said Brian, in an attempt to break the silence that had settled between them.

"Don't know," said Wensley.

"Annoying though, isn't it?"

"Suppose." Brian could almost hear Wensley's half-hearted shrug.

"You, er, like your new room then?"

"S'alright."

Brian felt something inside him snap. The discomfort and awkwardness was one thing, but getting the monosyllabic treatment was really just too much.

"Wensley this is stupid. We've haven't been able to talk to each other since we, well, you know. Why can't we just be like we were before?" It was not the most articulate question ever asked, but it was heartfelt.

For a while Wensley said nothing. "Because things have changed, haven't they?" was his eventual, and rather terse, reply.

"But… but…" Brian wasn't quite sure how to respond.

"It's your fault anyway," continued Wensley, a distinct edge of annoyance entering his voice. "If you hadn't… hadn't seduced me then it never would have happened."

"How exactly did I seduce you?" demanded Brian, feeling a rush of anger. "You were the one that started things in that tent."

"You'd been feeling me up for weeks."

"No I hadn't," shouted Brian, trying to push back guilty recollections of little touches and hugs that had been a little more intimate than strictly necessary.

"Really, well, I can't say that I've ever seen you grab Adam or Pepper like that."

"Fuck." Brian found himself kicking the cold metallic wall behind him, before, upset and miserable, slouching to the floor. "Look, I'm sorry. If I could go back and make it not have happened, I would. But I can't."

The paused that followed lasted for almost three minutes, but was far calmer than the previous silences. It was almost as if something that had been trying desperately to get out had finally escaped.

When Wensley finally spoke it was almost a whisper. "I'm not sorry it happened. Not completely anyway."

"You're… not?"

"It's just… just, well, could you imagine what would happen if people, you know, people who aren't Pepper and Adam, knew that I liked sleeping with men?"

"But everybody knows I'm bi, don't they? Well, almost everybody, I mean not my grandmother or great-uncle Alfred. But the point is that they hardly ever say anything, well nothing too bad anyway."

"Yes, but you're Brian."

"So?"

"So, you're better at getting on with people than I am. Besides, you're mum didn't go mental when you told her. Mine would."

Brian very nearly responded with sentiments to the tune of 'screw her', but managed somehow to bite the words back. "We could at least try and be friends again though."

"I suppose," said Wensley. "But only if you promise never to feed me a magic mushroom omelette again."

"That one was a complete accident, I swear," said Brian, cringing as he remembered the awful moment a year and a half ago that he'd realised he'd mixed up his evening meal with Wensley's.

"Shouldn't be too difficult to make sure it doesn't happen again then," said Wensley, a hint of amusement in his voice.

"Okay, but you've got to promise never to throw out any of my stuff again."

"But those T-shirts might as well have been old dish rags."

"They were still my old dish rags though," protested Brian, but without much seriousness.

It was at that moment that the lights flickered back on and the lift once more began to move.

Had all of this been happening in a Hollywood movie the lift doors would have glided open to reveal Brian and Wensley engaged in a passionate clinch. As this was Tadfield however, the lift doors shuddered open to reveal Brian sitting on the floor, Wensley leaning against the wall and an air of tentative reconciliation between them.

The first thing Brian noticed was that Adam and Pepper were standing anxiously in front of them.

"What are you two doing back so soon?" said Brian, as he stumbled to his feet.

"A girl from downstairs told us there'd been a blackout here and we wondered if you were okay," said Pepper. "Well, that and the fact that that woman behind the bar started hitting on Adam." It was obvious that she was biting her lip to keep herself from bursting out laughing.

"What, the snake abuser?"

"For God's sake Brian, will you stop going on about the bloody snake?"

"She wasn't hitting on me," said Adam, who despite his obvious irritation at Pepper's teasing, was clearly very relieved about something. "She just mistook me for somebody else, that's all."

"You two going back upstairs with us then?" asked Pepper.

Wensley nodded.

"I'll be back up in a minute," said Brian. "I've got something I need to do first."

----------

At 11:45 pm Nagini was shooing the last drunken stragglers from the pub. She had, she decided, rather enjoyed her first night as bar manager. As one might have expected her little black dress had raised net lust levels by almost 200; but it was the jealousy and wrath resulting from said lust that had been the most entertaining. Draco, of course, had attracted a fair bit of attention from a great many female – and for that matter a few male – patrons; a fact which he seemed to find rather painful.

"But they're muggles," he'd snapped, when she'd winked and told him what a lucky young man he was.

Her retort of 'well so are you' had been rather ill advised, given that he then disappeared to the store cupboard for half an hour for what she could only assume was a good cry and self-pitying session.

She'd also enjoyed the lurid and supposedly true tales that the few staff members who'd decided to brave coming in on the first night of term had told her. The tension in the Geography Department, for instance, sounded rather like power struggle currently going on in the Fourth Circle, and Professor Trentfield, head of the Department of Psychology sounded like he could give the Dukes of Hell a run for their money when it came to ruling minions with an iron fist.

"Look come on," she said, kicking an overweight young man who seemed to have fallen asleep under one of the window tables with four inch stiletto heels."Time to go. You can come back tomorrow night and do it all again, you know?"

The boy merely groaned in response.

"Fine. It looks like we'll have to do this the hard way." With a snap of her fingers he went from dead drunk to horribly hungover. "Now get out," she shouted, as he sat bolt upright and clutched his head. The unfortunate individual somehow managed to stagger, groaning and looking extremely sick, out of the door.

"Er, Nagini," said Draco, tapping her on the shoulder.

"What is it now?" she demanded, as she turned around to find him clutching at a dishcloth and looking even paler than usual.

He gulped. "You're not going to like this."

"Not going to like what?"

"Look, I don't want you to overreact but…." He trailed off, seemingly losing his nerve.

"But what Draco? I don't have all night, you know? Well, actually that's a lie, I do have all night, but I don't particularly want to spend it trying to wring simple sentences out of you."

"It's the Dark Lord," said Draco, eyes wide with fear. "He's gone."


	3. Misplaced Dark Lords and New Flatmates

A/N: A big thank you to Vulgarweed, for proof-reading this fic for me, and to everybody who left reviews for the previous two chapters.

Draco had often heard the old saying 'hell hath no fury like a woman scorned' uttered by his father. He was fast coming to the conclusion however that the phrase needed to be amended to 'hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, except when hell's fury takes the form of an ex-horcrux who's just been told that her pet Dark Lord's gone missing'. Nagini's immediate reaction to the information that Voldemort was no longer residing in his tank could be separated into four distinct stages: shock, disbelief, terror and anger. He'd never seen her truly angry before; annoyed, irked, irritated and generally pissed off, yes, but never outright enraged. It wasn't something that he ever wanted to witness again. Her first volley of outrage had been directed at the Dark Lord himself, and had been accompanied by a rain of glass and liquor, as each of the bottles on the top shelf behind the bar spontaneously shattered. She then proceeded to rant at length about what complete bastards Hastur and Crawly were, before eventually turning her ire on Draco.

As the furious glare fixed upon him, slit pupils narrowing and mouth contorting into a befanged snarl he gulped and began to back away. When a finger trembling with rage rose in his direction, he did the only thing that he felt able to. He burst into tears.

This was enough to startle Nagini out of her tirade.

"Oh look, there's no point crying," she said, obviously discomfited by the sight of Draco's sniffling. "It's not as if I'm going to turn you into a flobber worm or anything, is it? You're almost as bad as Belphegor was the last time Lillith shouted at him."

Draco hastily, and with no small amount of embarrassment, wiped away the tears with his shirt sleeve. "What are you going to do?" he asked.

"You mean what are 'we' going to do? We're going to find him."

There was something very unsettling about being made one half of a 'we', especially when the other member was a former succubus with an inferiority complex and gossip problem. "What do you need me for?" he said, failing to keep a note of pleading out of his voice. "Can't you use your demon senses, or something?"

Nagini sighed. "They're not working properly."

"Not working properly?"

"It's the Antichrist. Trying to detect a particular supernatural presence around this place is like one of you lot trying to catch the scent of a hint of lemongrass in a room filled with ammonia."

"So how are y- we going to find him?"

"We'll look for him. He can't have got far, not in that pathetic, underfed little body. If we're systematic about things we're bound to find him. It's not as if he could have left the building without help." There was something about her voice that suggested hope as opposed to certainty. "You take the bar area and I'll take the pipes and vents."

"Pipes and air vents, how are you going to…oh." He found himself edging away as Nagini, dress slipping to the floor, began to shift from scantily clad temptress into enormous, terrifying serpent.

"Well, what are you waiting for?" she hissed, as the grill removed itself from a floor level air vent next to the supply cupboard door.

Draco, not quite sure what the optimal search pattern to adopt was when it came to hunting for an evil reptile in a student pub, nervously began to peer at the shelves behind the bar counter. "Er, Nagini," he said, swallowing. "What do I do if I find him?"

There was an exasperated sibilant sigh. "Pick him up and put him back in the tank of courssse."

"Wouldn't that be a bit dangerous?"

"He'sss a bloody corn sssnake you idiot. What'sss he going to do? Give you a little nip?"

Draco didn't reply. There was still something deeply frightening about the prospect of laying his hands on Lord Voldemort. Even if he was now just a malnourished corn snake. Once he had managed to deduce that the odds were he wasn't hiding behind the Jack Daniels or Bombay Sapphire, Draco moved on to the seating area.

He spent the next three hours looking under tables, glancing behind radiators and moving about chairs without once catching sight of the Dark Lord. A fact for which he was admittedly quite relieved. Unfortunately Nagini wasn't having much success either; as was demonstrated by the hissed curses, occasional yelps of pain and creaks of delicate piping not really constructed to withstand the thrashing about of a serpent of her size and weight.

"Are you all right up there?" he asked, as the sound of cracking plastic came from the direction of the ceiling.

Nagini's reply was somewhat echoey and unintelligible, but seemed to contain the words 'stuck' and 'can't move'.

Draco was about ask a – quite probably ill advised – question about why she couldn't just change the shape of whatever it was that she'd become jammed in, when the door creaked open.

"I'm sorry we're, er, closed," he said to the dark-haired man in sunglasses, who stood with a faintly amused expression on his face on the step outside.

The man shrugged and stepped inside, the door closing itself behind him. "Doesn't matter, I'm just here to see an old friend of mine. Her name's Nagini. I expect you know her." He gestured to the high heeled shoes and crumpled dress that lay in a small crumpled heap in the middle of the floor. "Never been one for underwear, has she?" he said with a suggestive smirk.

Draco could feel his cheeks beginning to flush. "Um, I wouldn't know, Mr. er…."

"Crowley," the man supplied, his worryingly cheerful expression strongly indicative of somebody who knows they've got the upper hand. Though what he had the upper hand with regard to Draco really couldn't say.

"Oh, you're the… the" He only just managed to stop himself from saying the words 'flash bastard'. "The Serpent of Eden, aren't you?"

Crowley raised a distinctly sardonic eyebrow. "You've heard of me then."

"Nagini told me about you."

"Nothing good, I hope?"

Draco, highly unnerved by the whole exchange, wasn't quite sure how to reply for the best. He didn't think that 'well, actually she frequently espouses the belief that you're a job stealing bastard with a streak of luck a mile wide' was a suitable response. Fortunately Crowley didn't seem in the mood to press for one.

"Where is the old tart anyway?" he asked, pulling up a bar stool.

There was a muffled yelp from the direction of the ceiling.

"She's, er, she's…." He tried desperately to think of a plausible answer that didn't involve telling the interloper that she was hunting the infamous damned soul she'd illicitly smuggled out of hell. Just as he thought he was to have to go with the standard and completely unbelievable 'I'm afraid she's not here at the moment', inspiration struck. "We're playing hide and seek," he blurted out.

Crowley's brow furrowed in disbelief. "Hide and seek?"

"It's my favourite game."

"So why are her clothes on the floor then?"

"She's in snake form. It's, er, more challenging that way."

Crowley looked as though he was about to burst out laughing. "So she's in the pipes then? Must be difficult to find her. What with you being mortal and all that. Well, I'm presuming you're mortal. You are the Malfoy boy aren't you, Lucius's son? The one that got hit by the articulated lorry."

Draco gave an involuntary shudder as the final memory of his previous life flashed through his head. The terrifying recollection of the blinding headlights and frantically blaring horn of the oncoming MEALS(TM) delivery truck, replaying itself in all its horrific glory. "Yes, that's me," he said, looking at the floor. "I've been given a second chance."

"A second chance? I'm surprised you're not beating a path to the nearest Christian youth group." Crowley gave him a lecherous wink. "Of course, I expect Nagini has ways and means of keeping you occupied."

Draco's cheeks went from flushed to burning. "Look, I haven't…. I mean, we haven't done anything like that. I just sort of ended up working here and she's the one in charge."

"No nice angel here to keep you from giving in to her despicable wiles then?"

Relieved by the slight shift in topic, Draco attempted to pull himself together. "There was one that stopped by earlier, but he didn't seem particularly competent. I'm waiting to see who can offer me the best life plan before opting for damnation or salvation."

"Well, you don't want to spend an eternity surrounded by a bunch of poufy angels without anything to show for it, do you?" Draco couldn't quite work out if he was being sarcastic or not.

"Have you and Nagini known each other long then?" he asked, knowing that it was a rather idiotic question, yet not quite sure how else to keep the topic of conversation as far away from his own history as possible.

Crowley's expression suggested that he knew exactly what Draco was trying to do. "Ages, since before the fall, in fact."

"Fall?"

As if on cue there was a sharp cry of distress, followed quickly by the sound of plastic fracturing and five seconds later by a naked demoness crashing through the plaster ceiling.

"You know, from heaven. Some of us sauntered vaguely downwards," Crowley continued, temporarily ignoring the groaning entity on the floor, "Others got tossed out by the scruff of their necks after Michael caught them eavesdropping on a private conversation he was having with Uriel."

Despite a rather painful looking bump on her head and a certain amount of obvious disorientation, Nagini managed to scowl, drag herself to her feet and materialise herself a new dress and pair of stilettos. "I would have fallen anyway," she said through clenched teeth.

"Wasn't trying to imply that you wouldn't."

"Good!"

"Though I must admit that I'm rather surprised that they sent you up here to make sure that this one gets damned for a second time. From what I recall they only send experienced field agents up here for these poxy little shoulder demon jobs when they want them to do something else. Like spy on their fellow demons for instance."

Draco, wounded though he was about being referred to as a 'poxy little job' was impressed by the fact that Nagini managed to suppress all but the tiniest response to this last statement.

"I'm here as a punishment," she said, with a calculated look of annoyance. "Hastur's still pissed off about the failure of the Voldemort Project, well, that and the fact that I might have mentioned overhearing Belphegor telling Dagon about what Hastur and Pazuzu have been getting up to behind Ligur's back to a few close friends."

"Hastur and... Pazuzu, behind Ligur's back?" The sudden look of surprised revulsion on Crowley's face indicated that whatever pithy statement or sardonic expression he might have been cooking up had been temporarily overridden by horrified fascination.

Nagini nodded. "Apparently it's been going on for ages. They frequently meet for trysts at the upmarket bit of the Lake of Fire."

"Bloody h… Manchester." Judging by the way his eyes widened, clearly even he was mildly traumatised by the mental images induced by mentions of this coupling.

"Ligur still hasn't caught on yet. But then everybody says he's still suffering from PHWDPD."

"What the fuck's that when it's at home?"

"Post Holy Water Dowsing Panic Disorder. Can't look at a bucket without wincing. Well, that's what Beliel says, at least."

For some reason this statement seemed to make Crowley shift uncomfortably. "Well look at the time, I really should be going. Sin to incite, temptation to sow and all that. Anyway, nice to see you again Nagini and you too, Draco, isn't it?"

"That's right," said Draco, rather surprised when a small, white business card with the heading Anthony J Crowley, Student Counsellor, Room 666, University House was thrust into his hand, before Crowley headed back towards the door.

"Goodbye Crawly," said Nagini, with what looked like it was trying – and spectacularly failing - to pass for an innocent smile.

The demon stiffened slightly. "It's Crowley," he said sounding a tad irritated.

For about fifteen minutes after he'd seemingly departed Draco and Nagini stood in silence. Each attempt on Draco's part to re-assume conversation halted by a jumpy and paranoid shush and a hissed 'he'll still be listening'. Eventually however he did manage a hushed 'do you think he knows'.

"About the fact that I'm supposed to be spying on him or the fact that I've lost Riddle?" she said, slumping into the nearest chair.

"Both."

"Well, he obviously knows about the spying, or else he wouldn't have brought it up, or at least not as deliberately as he did. As for Riddle; that one depends on how much he heard before you saw him."

"What's he going to do?"

"How should I know?" she snapped, before heaving a despondent and gravity defying bosom lifting sigh. "If he's only aware of the fact that Hastur's sent me to spy on him he'll probably just keep out of my way. If he finds out about Riddle, he's got me over a barrel."

Draco's forehead wrinkled. "Over a barrel?" he queried, images of rather unusual sexual acts rising into his mind.

"Muggle saying. What I mean is that it would be good blackmail material."

"You could always find something to blackmail him with," suggested Draco.

"I suppose. Though given that he's going to be keeping an eye on me from now on, it might be harder than you think." A disturbingly speculative glint suddenly appeared in her eyes. "Of course, he's probably not going to be paying too much attention to you."

Draco once again found himself backing away. "No way," he said, shaking his head. "He'll frazzle me."

Nagini batted her eyelashes. "I'd give you your magic back."

Draco gulped, trying to hold back the surge of hope that coursed through him. "Really?"

"If you managed to dig up some dirt on him for me."

"What sort of dirt?"

"Anything that might compromise his demonic status: unnecessary kindness, selfless acts, unseemly consorting with the enemy, that kind of thing."

"And you'd really give me my magic back."

"Of course."

"Fine, I'll do it."

"Excellent."

"Just one thing though."

"What are we going to do about the Dark Lord? I mean, we've been looking for hours and there's still no sign of him."

"We'll just have to wait for him to show up again. I mean, he's been transformed into a powerless corn snake; it's not as if there's much he could do. He'll probably come back here out of sheer desperation. Now if you don't mind I need to concentrate on putting the ceiling back together."

As Draco turned his attentions to clearing up the debris he found himself unable to shake off the persistent whirring of the 'famous last words' siren in his head.

------------

Brian awoke with a start, a pang of nausea and an all consuming headache. It took several seconds for him to recall why he didn't appear to be in his usual bed in his parents' house.

Somebody was pounding on the door.

"Who is it?" he called out groggily, wishing the room wasn't so painfully bright.

"S'me," replied a rather too loud female voice.

"What is it Pepper?"

"It's half past two."

"What?" Surely it couldn't be that late. He had spent rather a long time hitting the bottle after his return to the flat the previous night, but he really shouldn't have overslept quite this much. "You mean as in half two in the afternoon?"

He could almost hear Pepper's eyes rolling. "No Brian, it's an unusually bright half two in the morning. Of course, I mean two thirty in the afternoon."

Brian glanced at his alarm clock. There was no disputing it. The little hand was half way between the two and the three and the big hand was bang on the six. He groaned. "Oh fucking hell, I've missed the library services induction."

Without warning or permission Pepper flung open the door.

"Don't worry," she said, tossing what looked like an extremely thick manual in his direction. It hit him on the shoulder. "Wensley picked up this for you."

"What is it?" asked Brian, feeling slightly worried by the sheer size of the thing.

"It's our first year introductory guide to library services."

Brian gaped. "That's an introductory guide?"

"Fraid so. Don't worry though I've had a quick flip through and it looks like you can skip everything before page 156. Though Wensley did think that the bit entitled 'From Papyrus to Paperback' was quite interesting. Anyway, me and Adam are going to sign up for discount membership at the sports centre and we were wondering if you wanted to come with us. You get 50 off if you do it today."

Brian made a face, unpleasant memories of PE lessons past flitting through his mind. "The sports centre, no thanks."

"Suit yourself. Got to start looking after your body sooner or later though. The way you're going on you'll end up with a beer belly and smoker's cough by the time you're twenty-five."

"Yeah, but unlike you carnivores I eat a healthy meat free diet."

Pepper snorted. "You live off microwavable vegetable curries when your parents aren't around to cook for you."

"But at least no poor, innocent animals died to make those curries."

"Apart from people," Pepper countered. "You do know that by buying ready meals made by many multinational corporations you're supporting the exploitation of workers in the developing world."

"Aww Pepper, it's too early for this."

She grinned. "Maybe if you got more exercise and cut down on the booze and pot you wouldn't feel so run down all the time."

"Oh sod off." He pulled one of his pillows from under his head and launched it in her direction. It missed and hit the wall.

"It'd probably help you improve your aim too."

"Stop it."

"Fine," she said, with an exaggerated gesture of defeat, as she turned to go. "I'll leave you to wreck your health in peace."

"See you later," he said, feeling the overwhelming urge to curl up and go back to sleep for a half hour or so.

She paused. "Brian, what's going on with you and Wensley?"

Brian groaned the groan of the long suffering. "We're friends again."

"Yeah, I worked that out. What I mean is how friendly are you exactly?"

"We're just friends. Nothing more." He could tell from her expression that she didn't really believe him. It was true though, he wasn't prepared to jeopardise his friendship with Wensleydale again by pushing for anything more. No matter how much he might want to. "Anyway, I might as well ask what's going on with you and Adam."

"What?" said Pepper. "Me and Adam have never been anything more than friends." Much to Brian's surprise she responded with far more incredulity and contrived seeming shock than the question warranted. "What made you think otherwise?"

Brian smiled. "Just wanted to let you know how it feels to have your friends badgering you about the exact nature of your relationships with other friends."

Pepper gave a sigh of exaggerated exasperation. "Fine, I won't do it again."

"Good, now can you please leave me to get dressed in peace?"

"See y…." she trailed off and cocked her head. "Brian, what's that noise."

"What noise?" said Brian, shaking his head.

"That hissing noise."

"Pepper, I can't hear anything."

She walked over to the wardrobe and, despite Brian's protestations opened the doors.

"Hey, I've got private stuff in there."

Five seconds later she gave a small yelp and jumped at least three feet back. "Brian, why the fuck is there a snake on top of your t-shirts?"

Brian looked away from his friend's inquisitorial gaze. "I couldn't just leave it in the bar. It was suffering."

"And you thought that it'd be better off at the bottom of your wardrobe?"

"I was going to get it somewhere better to live later on. I'm not taking it back to that sadistic bitch, Pepper, she'll end up killing it. You know what I heard her say to that blonde guy that works there last night when I went to get it; she said 'the bastard's going to know what humiliation feels like'.

Pepper rolled her eyes. "Fair enough, but don't you think you should give it to the RSPCA or something? I mean, you don't know the first thing about keeping reptiles."

"But I could learn," he insisted.

"It's your choice," said Pepper, with a shrug that suggested strong misgivings. "But you should at least get your arse out of bed and find out what to feed the poor thing."

"Alright," said Brian, feeling as though a challenge had been laid down. "I will."

----------

"…and then she fell through the ceiling."

"Really my dear, one shouldn't take such delight in the misfortunes of one's fellow creatures," said Aziraphale, trying to overlay amusement with a thin veneer of angelic disapproval. He and Crowley were drinking tea in their shared living room, which now boasted a cacophony of hugely clashing styles; from the ultra-modern gadgetry placed on the Victorian bookcase, to the floral bordered china plate, bearing rich tea biscuits on the stylish glass coffee table, and the tartan throw rug on the leather sofa.

"It was bloody funny though," said Crowley, still sniggering. "The kid was the best though: we're playing hide and seek, it's my favourite game."

"What on earth was she doing up there though?"

Crowley shrugged. "Something she quite obviously didn't want me to find out about."

Aziraphale took a bite out of his fifth biscuit of the tea break. "And are you?"

"Am I what?"

"Going to try and find out what they were up to."

"Of course I am. I was thinking of getting the kid to tell me."

"You're not going to hypnotise him are you?" said Aziraphale, with a frown. He couldn't help but feel that there was something a little off with manipulating disputed souls into aiding and abetting one's own nefarious intra-workplace espionage.

Crowley shook his head. "Doubt it'd work. She'd be stupid not to take precautionary measures now that she knows that I know that something's going on. Nah, I'll have to find a way to play on the kid's greed and pride."

Aziraphale sniffed. "I hardly think that would be appropriate."

"Why not? It's not as though I'm actually going to make him do anything, is it? Besides, it's not as if it'd be any different from the usual tempting."

"What I mean is that it wouldn't be proper for a soul awarded a second chance to be under the influence of two diabolic beings but only one divine."

"Oh please, the little bastard's one of ours through and through. I reckon that he's just being used as a very poor cover story for the spies being sent down here. And, from what you say, it's not as if that angel whatsisface…."

"Zeliel."

"Zeliel's rubbish at the whole soul winning lark anyway."

"Be that as it may, I still think it's terribly unsportsmanlike."

"Fine then. In that case, why don't you have a go at influencing him too?"

Aziraphale hesitated. He didn't really want to get involved in anything that would detract from his current battle against the forces of bibliographic barbarism and it wasn't as though heaven had instructed him to interfere and…. He mentally slapped himself. What was he thinking? Here was a soul at risk of eternal damnation and there he was trying to think of excuses not to get involved. Crowley's constant presence was clearly affecting him more than he'd previously thought. "Very well, my dear," he said, feeling a tiny prickle of glee at the look of surprise on the demon's face.

"Good look then," said Crowley, with an exaggerated shrug. "You'll need it with that one. Talk about a chip off the old block."

"A morally deficient upbringing can be combated with reasoned argument and a desire to change."

"You've never tried to conduct a reasoned argument with a Malfoy before, have you? I mean, all right they're not as bad as the Gaunts, but talk about standing firm in the face of logic and common sense. And as for a desire to change, well, let's just say that before Riddle got smoked, the breakfast routine at Malfoy Manor hadn't changed for five hundred years."

Aziraphale adopted his most irritatingly beatific smile. "One can but do one's best, Crowley."

"All right then, but if you do manage to defy the astronomical odds against you and do manage to get the little bastard hot footing it to church, be sure to get him to tell you what the tart's up to; you know, confession being good for the soul and the rest of it."

"Rest of what?" said Aziraphale, brow creasing in mild perplexity.

Crowley sighed. "Never mind."

"You'll have to move out, of course."

"What?"

"Well, given that we're being monitored I really don't think it would be very prudent of us to allow our domestic arrangements to remain as they are."

"Oh, and where do you suggest I go? This is Tadfield not London. I can't just wish properties vacated. All right, I could, but I don't think that Adam would be too happy about it."

"Well," said Aziraphale, in excruciatingly sensible tones, "I'm sure that Anathema and Newt would be more than happy to let you stay with them and little Bentley until you found somewhere suitable."

Crowley, quite obviously not fond of the idea, pulled a face. "Why should I be the one to move out?"

Aziraphale opened his mouth to respond, only to realise that he didn't actually have a good reason as to why he should remain and Crowley leave. "I, er, need to remain close to the library. In case of night time book binding emergencies, you understand."

"But I need to be here to counsel vulnerable students during the hours of darkness. It's when the depression and suggestibility really hits, you know."

"I suppose we could toss a coin."

Crowley seemed to consider this for a few moments. "How about a wager?"

"What sort of wager?" said Aziraphale, slightly dubious.

"First one to incite the Malfoy brat to perform a deed worthy of their side's mission statement."

"You mean that if I succeed in encouraging him to perform an act of kindness then I get to stay here, and if you…."

"….manage to get him to do something evil then you can go and stay with Anathema and Newt."

Aziraphale thought about it. From what he knew of the boy's background it would be difficult, but there was something about the way that Crowley seemed to breezily assume that this soul would inevitably belong to hell that was downright arrogant. Not that it was particularly unusual for Crowley to engage in obscene displays of arrogance, but there was something about it on this occasion that was rather, well, annoying. As if he didn't think that Aziraphale could cut it when it came to difficult thwarting jobs. Well, he'd show him - with fitting levels of modesty and humility of course. "Very well," he said, extending his hand. "Do we start now?"

"Twenty minutes time."

"Why twenty minutes?"

"Well, we're probably not going to be spending that much time in each other's company for a while, and I thought we should, well, you know?"

"Not really," lied Aziraphale, with a look of mock confusion.

"Say goodbye properly."

The mock confusion did not abate. "I'm afraid you'll have to elaborate."

Crowley elaborated.

"My dear," Aziraphale said, wishing the curtains shut. "I must say I was hoping for rather more than twenty minutes."

----------

Whilst Crowley and Aziraphale were bidding each other a very fond and energetic farewell, Brian and Pepper were stalking the reptile aisle of Upper Tadfield's largest pet shop in search of a home for Brian's newly acquired pet.

"I don't see what's wrong with that one," said Pepper, pointing to a modestly sized and reasonably priced tank that proclaimed itself to be the ideal environment for smaller snakes.

"It's too small," said Brian, who was eyeing up an enormous glass structure labelled the Python Palace. "Roger needs to have lots of space to slither around in.

Pepper raised an eyebrow. "Roger?"

"Yeah that's what I've decided to call him. It was originally a toss up between that and Humphrey, but then I remember that my Aunt Grace's already got a cat called Humphrey."

"He's just a little snake though. It's not as if he'll need all of that space."

"I need to make his tank as similar to his natural habitat as possible."

"Yes but you need to actually be able to actually fit the tank into your room without the residence manager noticing. Besides, that thing costs over ten thousand quid. Even if you used up all of your student loan and maxed out your overdraft you still wouldn't be able to afford it."

"I could afford that one though," he said, pointing to what looked like a slightly smaller version of the Python Palace. "It's only three grand."

"But how would you pay for things like rent and food for the rest of the year? Not to mention all of the booze and weed you'll probably be consuming."

"Well, if I buy it with my new credit card, I'll still have my loan and overdraft to pay for everything else."

Pepper shook her head. "Brian, your new credit card has a thirty-five percent APR."

"Aww come on Pepper, don't talk like that. You know I'm useless at maths. 'Sides, I'll find a way to pay it back before they start heaping the interest on."

"How?"

"I could always get a weekend job."

Brian had rarely seen Pepper look quite so disbelieving as she did at that moment. "You, give up your weekends?"

"I could do it. If I needed to," he said, feeling as though a challenge had been thrown down. "In fact I was thinking of asking about on campus if there's any jobs going about there."

"Well, you couldn't work in the bar. Not after your reptile snatching act."

"It was reptile liberation. Anyway, I wouldn't want to work for a depraved animal abuser, would I?"

"Bet that won't stop you from drinking there though."

Brian didn't reply. The fact was that even if the proprietor did now feature somewhere between Adolph Hitler and Mr. RP Tyler on his mental list of Bloody Awful People, it was still the only pub within walking distance.

"So are you getting that one then?" said Pepper, clearly deciding that she didn't stand any realistic chance of changing Brian's mind on the matter of the tanks.

"Yeah," he said, pulling one of the large glass flat packs from the racking. For one awful moment the rest of the neatly stacked row wobbled slightly, giving the impression that the lot of them were liable to crash to the floor at any moment. Fortunately this did not come to pass.

"I think," said Pepper, as Brian held his soon to be purchase with a careless grasp, "that I should probably hold it for now." Then, as an afterthought she added: "Don't you think that you should buy some food for, er, Roger while you're here?"

"Right." Brian nodded, as Pepper took his burden from him. "Good thinking. I wonder where they keep the snake food."

"In the freezer probably."

Brian felt slightly perplexed. He'd always imagined that one fed snakes things like biscuits that promoted the development of glossy scales. "The freezer?"

"Well, you could feed them live mice if you wanted to. But I thought that you'd prefer the pre-killed variety."

He felt his stomach churning in revulsion. He'd always rather liked mice. "B… but isn't there anything else I could give him, like a vegetarian option, or something?"

Pepper very calmly and carefully placed the tank-to-be on the floor. She then proceeded to spend five whole minutes doing battle with an uncontrollable urge to laugh.

They eventually left the shop with a new tank, a container filled with frozen, very dead mice and The Complete Guide to the Care and Feeding of Corn Snakes.

----------

Draco walked aimlessly around the campus's central square. It was a warm and rather pleasant day, but he felt exhausted and miserable. He hadn't been able to get much sleep, and what he'd managed to get had been filled with uncomfortable dreams and dark forebodings. Nagini, having decided that she wanted an afternoon alone (by which Draco suspected that she meant that she was going to spend a few hours getting in touch with a few of her friends from the pit) had thrust several twenty pound notes into his hand and told him to sod off until opening time. But, having rarely left the pub since his return to earth a month ago, he had very little idea of what exactly one could do with two hundred Muggle pounds. His unhappiness and self-pity were compounded by the fact that he was surrounded by happy and excited looking people who were imbued with all the cheerfulness of those who had lots of good reasons to look forward to the life that stretched out ahead of them.

As he mused upon the general unfairness of existence a woman walking a few metres ahead of him tripped over a crack in the concrete that hadn't been there three seconds previously and was sent sprawling to the ground; the contents of her handbag conveniently spewing themselves forth onto the walkway. Draco's first inclination was to quickly nab any items that looked like they might be of value whilst everybody was focused on helping the unfortunate fallee to her feet. Then the strangest thing happened. He was seized by a sudden feeling of pity for the woman; after all had he not on so many occasions tripped over and displaced his belongings in such a fashion? Had he never felt the deep hurt of realising that somebody had made off with his possessions whilst he'd been temporarily incapacitated? And in a completely unprecedented fit of empathy he crouched down to gather together the assorted papers, coins and cosmetics and hand them back to their owner.

It was as he was reaching for what looked to be a rather expensive pen that a foot made contact with his thigh.

"'Ere look where you're going," said an unfriendly voice. Draco glanced up to see a large man glowering at him.

"Me, look where I'm going?" said Draco with a scowl. "You were the one that walked into me, Muggle."

"You calling me a Muggle?" demanded the man, who clearly didn't know what a Muggle was, but wasn't about to demonstrate his ignorance of what was clearly an insult of the most derogatory variety.

Draco pulled himself up straight. "Yes," he said, with his best sneer. "Unless you're a mudblood, of course."

A large fist connected with his face.

As he staggered backwards, clutching his nose with his left hand, Draco found himself reaching for his wand, ready to hex the oaf into oblivion. The realisation that as a non-magical person – he couldn't bear to think of himself as a 'Muggle' or, even worse, a 'Squib' – cursing people was a form of retaliation no longer available to him, filled him with a sense of despair more painful than anything he had felt during his years of paper pushing damnation. He was far too absorbed by this feeling of utter desolation to notice the two men standing in a seemingly innocuous fashion on the other side of the square.

"Game, set and match," said Crowley with a smirk. "Wrath triumphs over charity once more."

"But he was trying to help that poor woman you tripped up," complained Aziraphale, looking ever so slightly flustered.

Crowley made a dismissive gesture. "The road to hell is paved with good intentions, you know that."

"Yes, though if we're talking about intentions then I must point out that the boy didn't actually hex the man."

The level of smugness on the demon's face multiplied by a factor of five. "Ah, but don't most of your people say that to think of sinning is a sin in itself?"

Aziraphale sighed. "Very well, my dear," he conceded. "You've won the battle, but I assure you that this does not mean that the war is over."

"Fine, fine," said Crowley, trying to affect an air of indifference. "Just so long as you know that you're the one moving out. Now if you'll excuse me I've got some more impressionable young minds to corrupt."

After waving Crowley goodbye Aziraphale proceeded to watch Draco Malfoy's attempt to staunch the bleeding from his nose. With a small, discreet hand gesture Draco's injury began to heal itself at a remarkable rate. He could see why Crowley considered the boy to be a dead cert for re-damnation, and it would be a difficult - possibly impossible - task to coax him into the light; but there did seem to be a few traces of goodness still in him and one couldn't just give up on somebody because they might not come round to your way of thinking. No, Aziraphale told himself, heaven couldn't let this soul go without more than a token fight. He'd talk to Zeliel about it... later, that was, after he'd checked on the state of his poor beleaguered library.

----------

"See, he likes it," said Brian, as Roger the corn snake AKA the Dark Lord Voldemort coiled up contentedly in a corner of his new glass tank.

Wensleydale, who'd just spent the last two hours putting the thing together, after Brian and Pepper had admitted defeat when it came to following the indecipherable assembly instructions, looked at him critically. "And are you going to shout for Pepper every time he needs to be fed?"

Brian, slightly embarrassed, looked momentarily away. He knew that the day would dawn when he'd have to overcome his squeamishness, take one of the dead rodents out of the box in the fridge-freezer in which they were currently residing and feed it to Roger; but for now he was rather hoping that Pepper would be amenable to doing it for him.

"I still can't believe you did it though."

"Did what?"

"Stole the snake. I mean, it's only our second day here and you're already doing stuff that's likely to get you kicked out."

"Look, I've already gone through this with Pepper. Roger was being mistreated, so I rescued him."

For a moment Wensleydale looked as though he was about to argue, but then seemed to think the better of it.

"Thanks for helping me out with this," said Brian, dropping down onto the edge of his bed with a look of exhaustion, which to any naive onlooker would suggest he'd been the one who'd spent the previous couple of hours getting to grips with several square metres of glass plating. "You're a good mate Wensley."

For some reason this made Wensleydale smile, all residual traces of disapproving reluctance at once fading from his face. "You're welcome," he said, sitting down next to Brian.

The sudden presence of a warm, if fully clothed, body almost touching his own meant that Brian found himself faced with an acute sensation of gut wrenching awkwardness coupled with the conflicting, and equally acute, urge to move in closer.

What happened next, however, caused him to freeze in utter startlement. Wensleydale, in a display of extremely un-Wensleydale-like boldness (the like of which Brian hadn't witnessed since a certain night, in a tent, half-way up a Peruvian mountain) slipped an arm around his shoulders and clumsily pressed his lips against Brian's.

For about four seconds Brian found himself quite unable to process what was happening. Then it dawned upon him that Wensley was a) kissing him and b) hadn't needed any prompting to embark upon this course of action. Unfortunately, just as he decided that the best course of action would be to kiss back as hard as could, there was a very loud knock on the door.

Wensleydale immediately pulled away, a bright red flush consuming most of his face.

"Pepper, is that you?" called out Brian, feeling more than a little disgruntled.

"Yeah," came the slightly muffled reply. "Just thought I'd let you know that our new flatmate's arrived."

Brian pulled a face. "New flatmate?"

"He's in the kitchen with Adam."

"Oh right." He turned to Wensleydale, who seemed rather reluctant to meet his gaze. "I suppose we should go and meet him."

Wensleydale nodded, eyes focussed on the floor. "Look, I'm sorry about that."

"About what?"

"About what just happened. I didn't mean to… I just…."

Brian had often heard people talking about their heart sinking. He had not however, ever realised until now quite what it felt like.

"Right," he said quietly, "I s'pose that we should go and meet the new guy."

Wensleydale nodded with rather more vigour than was warranted. "Yeah, yeah, we should do that."

As he went to open the door Brian found himself pausing mid step. "Look," he said, trying to resist the urge to look everywhere but at Wensley, "you're not going to go all weird on me or anything again, are you?"

"No, of course not, what made you think… oh," Wensleydale trailed off, before clearing his throat. "What I meant to say was: no, I'm not going to go weird on you again. Now, are we going to meet the new guy, or what?"

With a backward glance at Roger the snake, who was still contentedly coiled up in his tank, Brian walked out into the hallway and through the door to the kitchenette. He was greeted by the sight of Adam and Pepper holding large cups of coffee and talking to a red-haired man, wearing a pair of badly cut jeans and a red t-shirt, who looked like he was somewhere in his mid-twenties.

"Here are Brian and Wensley now," said Adam.

The man, who was slouching in one of the chairs around the dinner table, nodded in greeting.

"This is Ron," said Pepper, "he's doing media studies."

----------

Zeliel sat in the Sports Centre's tiny staffroom feeling thoroughly miserable. _Now, we know these 'university campuses' are hotbeds of decadence and perversion,"_ Michael had said, with that intensely worrying 'somebody's about to get smited' glint in his eye. _And while you're on earth I want you to strike a blow again sin. Encourage good healthy exercise amongst the students, steer them away from temptation._ Zeliel wasn't quite sure how promoting 'good, healthy exercise' would prevent sin, given that most of the newly formed sports clubs seemed to be trying to recruit new members with promises that all associated social events would feature copious and subsidised alcohol consumption, but one generally didn't try to argue a point like this with Michael.

He really wasn't any good at this whole 'field operative' thing. So far he'd been faced with a demon who refused point blank to engage in any of the formalities of angelic/demonic conflict, the lost soul who he was supposed to be saving didn't seem to have any interest in being saved unless there was something material in it for him, several of the young women who he'd encountered whilst handing out the membership cards had made lewd suggestions at him (with even lewder ones following when Zeliel had pointed out that what they were proposing would involve at least three kinds of deadly sin) and, as if this wasn't bad enough, the official _University of Tadfield Sports Centre_ uniform he was being forced to wear itched like anything.

There was a knock on the door.

"Er, come in," he called out, slightly startled, it was the first time all day that anybody had knocked rather than just barging in.

The door opened to reveal a light-haired, tweed clad angel carrying what looked like a box of cream cakes.

"Aziraphale!"

"Zeliel, old chap, how are you?"

Zeliel inwardly groaned and added, being confronted by a colleague one is supposed to be spying on, despite personal misgivings, to the list of things that had gone wrong since his arrival on earth. "Oh, er, very well thank you, I must say I wasn't expecting you to, er, show up here like this."

"I've come to see you about one of your projects."

Zeliel found himself desperately wishing that he could disappear for, say, a couple of millennia.

"Ireallydidn'twantthisthejobbutMichaelsentmeheretospyonyou," he blurted out.

"Pardon?" said Aziraphale, an expression of what looked like mild concern on his face.

"I really didn't want this job Aziraphale. I mean, spying on other angels just can't be right, even if it's called covert observation. And I just want you to know that I didn't volunteer for this one."

For a second Aziraphale seemed rather perplexed. "I was talking about Mr. Malfoy."

"Oh," was the only response Zeliel could think of. He'd really messed things up now. Michael would be furious at him for giving the game away and Aziraphale would probably end up politely disliking him for the rest of eternity.

"Of course, I know about this whole distasteful spying business too; but what I meant was that I'd like to help you with Draco."

"You want to help me?"

"Only if you want me to, I wouldn't want to tread on your toes."

Had he not been so relieved and dumbfounded Zeliel might have asked the inevitable question as to what his toes had to do with anything.

"You see, I, er, have it on good authority that there's now more than one demon tempting the boy."

"More than one demon, but that's not…."he trailed off.

"Right or fair?" supplied Aziraphale. "No, it's not, but if there were two of us, we might be able to even up the odds a little."

"Well, I'd certainly appreciate the help. You see, I really don't think I'm cut out for any of this. I mean, what are you supposed to do when the person you're trying to save doesn't seem to be interested in anything apart from getting his old, morally deficient life back?"

"Ah." Aziraphale nodded sympathetically. "I think that what we need to do is be creative."

"Creative?"

"Yes, take a less direct approach."

"Yes, but how?"

"Well," said Aziraphale, smiling, "I thought we might discuss it over a nice cup of tea."

For reasons Zeliel couldn't quite fathom, these words made his troubles seem a little bit lighter.

----------

Ronald Weasley stood in the kitchen of Flat 13 trying desperately to look casual and relaxed. Pepper, Brian and Wensleydale had all gone out to do whatever it was that Brian, Wensleydale and Pepper did when they weren't standing around in the tiny kitchen drinking coffee. He wasn't sure what it was, but there was something about being alone with Adam that made him distinctly uneasy.

"I wasn't really expecting any wizards to show up."

Ron felt his jaw drop. "Bloody hell!"

"I can just tell," explained Adam, in response to the question Ron had been too shocked to ask.

"Well," said Ron, deciding that it might be a good idea to sit down, "if you must know why I'm here, it's because last year I got arrested and fined 100 Galleons for helping to smuggle flying carpets. My best friend paid it for me, but it was all over the Prophet and my parents were furious at me. Then my older brothers fired me from Weasley's Wizard Wheezes after I accidentally destroyed over half of their stock. Oh, and then my girlfriend dumped me in favour of celibacy and House Elf rights."

Adam made a sympathetic noise. "Well, I s'pose I can see why you did a runner from the magical world, but, what I meant was, why come here specifically?"

"Oh that," said Ron. "Er, I got sick of working at the lipstick factory and a bloke I met on the number 42 bus told me that if I wanted an easy life I should've become a student. I mean, I told him that I really hated schoolwork, but he said that university students were all layabouts who do nothing but get drunk at the tax payers' expense. So I asked him what the easiest course available was and he said _media studies, 'cos they just watch and talk about films, don't they_. And I thought that that had to be better than sticking tops on lipstick all day; so I decided to give it a try."

Adam seemed to ponder this. "I suppose," he said eventually, "listening to the advice of a bloke you met on the bus has to be one better that listening to the advice of a bloke you met in a pub."

"Yeah," said Ron weakly, deciding not to mention the time that he'd lost over two hundred Muggle pounds after listening to horseracing tips from a pub dwelling individual going by the name of 'Lucky' Paul.

"Look, I won't mention to the others that you're really a wizard, but I don't want you messing any of them about with magic."

"Messing them about with magic?" queried Ron, slightly puzzled.

"You know, casting spells on them unless it's a matter of life or death."

"Right," said Ron, somehow very aware that it really wouldn't be wise to do anything other than what Adam suggested on this matter. "No messing about." For a few moments there was an uncomfortable silence. "Just one question though."

"What is it?"

"Er, I don't suppose you could show me how to use a microwave?"

As Adam explained the nuances of modern Muggle cooking to a fascinated Ron, in Brian's room the Dark Lord was stirring. After a good meal of rodent and a nice rest in his new, lamp heated home and several assurances from his new protector that his former tormentor would be reported to something called the RSPCA, he felt much better. So much better, in fact that he was already planning his terrible revenge on those who had vanquished and/or mistreated him. Unfortunately for him, said plans for terrible revenge were somewhat limited by the fact that he was being forced to plot and scheme with, well, the brain of a corn snake, which was proving to be rather taxing. Still, like any evil and malicious creature he was determined to inflict untold agony upon those who had crossed him. Oh yes, he'd make them all pay. Just as soon as he'd finished digesting this mouse.


	4. Sympathy for the Devil's Son

A/N: I recently found this chapter in a half-written on my laptop and decided to start updating this story again (though further chapters will probably come once I've got some more of Sex, Drugs and Existential Crises written and posted). As far as HP canon goes, this fic should be considered partially AU as of the end of DH. I am going to incorporate as much DH canon as I can into the story, but as it was started just after HBP, I'm not going to rewrite the bits that contradict DH (such as Draco getting hit by the articulated lorry and Fred still being alive).

-0-0-0-0-

By the last day of Freshers' Week Ronald Weasley had decided that he liked being a student very much. Granted, he hadn't actually done any actual studying yet. However, from what he had gathered from talking to the other new students this was apparently a somewhat peripheral activity that occasionally occurred when one wasn't drinking, sleeping or having surreal conversation with one's fellow students. Doubtless Hermione would have something to say about this absence of academic devotion; but it was Ron who was here at the University of Tadfield, while she was out in the world doing whatever it was that celibate elf rights activists did. So her presumed opinions on the subject really shouldn't matter. Alas however, for some extremely peculiar reason they did; a fact that disturbed him somewhat. Not that he had any intention of changing his approach to student life, of course. It was more the case that, in a strange and somewhat worrying kind of way, he missed being the target of her near-constant exasperation at the lack of scholastic interest amongst her peers.

He missed Harry and his occasionally infuriating hero complex too. And Neville and his plant fixation, and Luna with her bizarre conspiracy theories and…. Oh bugger, he was dwelling on things again. He'd thought he'd managed to stop doing that. But the gut churning pang of regret he felt when he thought about his estrangement from his family and friends was as sharp as ever it had been.

Still, his new flatmates, despite having just met him for the first time a few days ago, had proved themselves to be a good lot. True, Adam was a tad disconcerting at times and Wensleydale seemed to have a distinctly Hermioneish habit of taking things rather too seriously, but they both seemed eager to him feel welcomed. And Pepper and Brian were both a good laugh. Even if he did find himself involuntarily doing a hippogriff in the airplane lights impersonation every time Pepper mentioned third world debt or feeling tad nauseous when Brian launched into a descriptive spiel on the evils of meat every time he saw Ron eating anything that might contain a hint of animal product.

Getting up from his unmade bed, Ron rummaged around the debris that had accreted around the sleeping area over the last few days, until he found the list of things he was supposed to take with him to the following day's course induction. He had thus far neglected to do any sort of academic preparation for the coming week (after all, he was doing media studies not advanced potions). However, he supposed that he should probably make some sort of cursory effort. A glance at the crumple sheet of light green A4 he'd been given when he'd enrolled revealed that he might be lacking in a few item, such as pens, pencils, highlighters, writing paper and the courses two core textbooks, but then it was only going to be his first day so he didn't really expect to be doing anything other that sitting there pretending to pay attention while the tutors waffled on about how glad everybody was to be here. Not that he'd ever witness a media studies course induction first hand before, but he liked to think that television and third hand accounts of workmate's sister's friend's first year at university, had given him the basics.

He therefore dutifully stuffed his wallet, enrolment certification and still untouched course handbook into the battered rucksack Brian had given him after discovering that he was lacking in this area, before congratulating himself on his organisational skills and deciding that he deserved the rest of the night off.

Alas, while the preceding evenings had been filled with university-sponsored entertainments (most of which had involved the consumption of vast quantities of alcohol), there had been nothing organised for that evening. The powers that be clearly hoping that the new students would take the cue and use the Sunday before the start of the term proper as a day of rest. Ron though had got plenty of rest that morning: it having taken him until 2:00pm to sleep off his hangover, and was thus now feeling somewhat restless (though this probably had more to do with the four cans of red bull he'd consumed in an effort to shrug off the afternoon's grogginess). He therefore found himself walking out of his room and into the corridor in search of somebody to talk to.

Pepper's door was closed, indicating that she was either out or didn't want to be disturbed. Wensleydale's was ajar, but Wensley himself appeared to be diligently tapping away at his laptop, ostensibly involved in some kind of studious pursuit. The loud music and acrid smell emanating from Brian's room suggested that its occupant was chilling out and might welcome a visitor. However, enjoyable as he might otherwise find Brian's eccentric company, he found himself experiencing pangs of intense anxiety in the presence of the man's pet snake. He wasn't quite sure why such a small, pathetic seeming creature should induce such unease, but he really hated the way the thing had seemed to glare at him the last time Brian had invited him in to sample the Muggle equivalent to centaur herb. Call it paranoia, but he'd felt almost as if it had been sizing him up.

He glanced at Adam's door. It was cracked open a few inches, indicating that it was currently occupied, but Ron felt uncomfortable at the thought of approaching the young man for the purpose of idle conversation. Though he'd been friendly and welcoming enough since Ron's first night in the flat, he had never told him exactly how he knew Ron was a wizard. This on its own Ron might have put down to him having magical relatives and an extremely perceptive nature. However, that wouldn't explain the way the fair haired young man just seem to _know_ things about him. Things that Ron was certain he'd never mentioned to any of his new flatmates. It had happened several times over the last few days. They'd be talking and Adam would casually make reassuring comments that Ron would only later realise contained bits of information that the young man shouldn't possibly have known unless he was on speaking terms with a good portion of the Weasley family.

As if on cue, the door opened and a head poked around the door.

"Hi Ron," said Adam, with a small smile.

"Alright mate," replied Ron, unable to shake the eerie, but utterly unfounded, feeling that Adam knew exactly what he'd been thinking.

"Do you want to go for a walk?" the young man asked.

Ron's brow furrowed. "A walk?"

Adam nodded. "You know, around the grounds."

He gave an uneasy shrug. It wasn't that he thought that Adam would do anything to harm him. More that there was a good chance that Ron would come away from the interaction with the thoroughly distressing sense that there wasn't an aspect of his life that his flatmate wasn't privy to.

Seeming to sense his unease Adam frowned. "You don't have to," he said, sounding slightly guilty. "It's just that I thought that we could talk about things. I mean, I know you're probably wondering how I know so much about you."

"Yeah, the thought had crossed my mind," said Ron, weakly, now even more disconcerted by his new flatmate, yet strangely loath to do or say anything that might hurt his feelings. "I suppose I could come out for a bit."

Adam smiled.

Ron experienced a sudden and inexplicable wave of reassurance.

-0-0-0-

As the sun set over Jasmine Cottage, Aziraphale gave a small sigh and walked back in from the quiet of the garden to the noise of Newton Pulsifer-Device doing battle with the upstairs lighting.

Like Ron, Aziraphale was also experiencing a little guilty ambivalence towards his new housemates.

He adored Anathema, Newt and little Bentley with all his angelic heart. He really did. However, after a week of feeling obligated to eat Anathema's organic, vegetarian, sugar-free, wheat-free, lactose free-meals and bear witness to Newt's efforts at 'home improvement', he found himself feeling just a tad claustrophobic.

When he'd mentioned this to Crowley two days earlier, the demon had rolled his eyes and told him to move somewhere else. However, he really couldn't stand to hurt their feelings, by declaring his intention to leave so soon. They were both being so kind.

And there was little Bentley, of course. A thoroughly charming little boy who, despite inheriting his father's level of non-affinity with all things digital and electrical, already seemed to be developing a great interest in books. The angel felt duty bound to help supervise the youngsters introduction to the written word and steer him away from the perilous path of marking one's place in a novel by _shudder_ folding the page.

He just wished that Anathema hadn't looked so disapproving when he'd mentioned his great love of 'dining out'. He knew that most restaurants were a hotbed of capitalism and ingredients of ecologically dubious origin, but he really didn't think that frequenting the more upmarket ones was worthy of _that_ expression.

-0-0-0-

"...and then I decided that I couldn't go around messing people around. I had to just leave things be. Well, apart from small things like Brian's exam results, but that's different."

As Adam finished telling the tale of how he came to be, he turned to his companion

Ron stared. "You're the Antichrist?"

Adam nodded, wondering if now would be the point at which his flatmate either ran away or started making accusations of insanity.

Ron however merely regarded him with mild startlement. "I always thought that you were a Muggle myth."

He shook his head. "Afraid not."

For several seconds Ron regarded him in silence.

Adam braced himself.

The response he was expecting never came.

"Funny old world," said Ron. "I never thought I'd meet two Chosen Ones in a lifetime."

"You're not scared of me or anything?" asked Adam, unable to keep the hope from his voice. Out of respect for Ron's privacy he was doing his best not to pry into the other young man's thoughts or emotions, but there didn't seem to be any blind terror on his face.

Ron shook his head. "I am a Gryffindor, you know," he said. "Besides, I don't reckon that there's any point being scared of you. I mean, if you wanted to do anything to me or blow up the world or anything, you'd have already done it."

Adam almost sagged with relief.

"What I don't get though," Ron continued, "is why you haven't told your mates yet. I mean, they must suspect that something's a bit odd about you."

He gave a sigh, not quite sure how to explain it. "If they remembered everything then they'd all want me to do things."

Ron gave a snort. "So I suppose that asking for a few sports channels on my telly set is out then."

Adam gave a weak smile. "I wasn't talking about that kind of thing. That I can do. It's more justice and world peace and saving the rainforest I can't do... Well, I could but—"

"Yeah, 'messing around', you told me."

He nodded. "I don't think that Brian and Pepper would understand."

"You fancy her, don't you?" said Ron.

His eyes widened. "How did you—?"

"It's obvious. The way you look at her. You should ask her out. Leave it too long and by the time you both manage to get together she might be be too fixated on House Elf rights for it to work."

Adam looked at Ron.

Ron looked at Adam.

As both young men burst out laughing, some of the tension each had been bearing seemed to dissipate.

"I'm going to check out the Student' Union," said Ron, glancing at his watch. "Haven't been there yet. I don't suppose that you fancy a pint."

"No thanks," said Adam. "I think I had enough last night."

"Suit yourself," said Ron. "But think about what I said, yeah. Ask her out. I'd give you my book on Failsafe Ways to Charm Witches, but, well, that one didn't work out too well for me in the end."

"I'll think about it," said Adam, as he turned to head back to the flat. "See you later, Ron."

"Yeah, later, Adam."

A few seconds later he paused in his tracks, as a thought hit him.

"Ron," he called out, to his rapidly retreating flatmate.

Ron turned to look at him quizzically.

"You might get a bit of a shock at the pub," he said. "But try not to worry about it too much. I wouldn't let anybody hurt a friend of mine."

-0-0-0-

As the drunken Muggle girl who'd been attempting to grope him all evening was finally escorted from the pub by two friends, Draco heaved a sigh of relief.

"We're running low on vodka," Nagini said, surveying the contents of the stock cupboard. "And I think we need to get in more Aftershock too. That 'buy four get three free' promotion we ran yesterday seems to have been really popular."

She seemed pleased that, despite the fact that she was watering down the majority of alcoholic substances in the bar, the students of Tadfield University were demonstrating an aptitude for binge drinking that was prodigious by even British standards: a talent that she felt diabolically obliged to encourage.

Though perfectly capable of materialising more of what the student populace was clamouring for, with just the blink of an eye, she had been insistent about actually exchanging money for the beverages, on the grounds that ordinary, not particularly observant humans had a horrible habit of noticing trivial, insignificant things, such as self-refilling vodka bottles, when it was least convenient. And when this happened it usually led to unpleasant things such as auditing. Auditors, Nagini insisted, were a breed apart from normal human and abnormally resistant to either infernal or divine suggestion.

Unlike Crowley, Aziraphale and Ron, Draco had not had a good week. In fact, if he wanted to be melodramatic about things - which he frequently was - he'd have declared it to be the worst week he'd had since being returned to earth. Given that there had only been five of these thus far, this was perhaps not saying a great deal; but his bout of self-pitying anguish being what they were, such objective observations were of little consequence.

His initial stab of all-out panic at the Dark Lord's disappearance had been replaced by a generalised feeling of anxiety about the whole thing. Nagini's 'wait and see if he turns up' policy on the matter struck him as a very bad idea, but he was at a complete loss as to what to suggest they should be doing instead. Worse than this constant sense of foreboding however was his job itself. The fact that he was being forced to wait on a bunch of drunken Muggles under threat of losing a roof over his head was bad enough, but it was the way that they treated him like… like he wasn't the heir to one of the magical worlds most infamous pure blooded families that really got to him.

The quest to have his rightful powers restored wasn't going too well either. During the time in which he hadn't been waiting on the Muggles, sleeping or bemoaning his fate, he had diligently sought out Crowley and attempted, from a distance, to acquire evidence of behaviour unbefitting of a demon on a Muggle camera. Unfortunately, he had not succeeded in observing a single act that would qualify as such. It seemed almost as if Crowley was sadistically timing his undemonic activities to coincide with Draco's shifts at the bar.

Draco really didn't see how things could get any worse.

Then the door opened and Any Worse walked straight through.

"MALFOY!"

Draco gaped with an expression of utter horror at his old nemesis's sidekick. Of all the people who, in his deepest nightmares, he'd imagined might show up at the University of Tadfield, Ronald Weasley hadn't even been a consideration. Yet there he was; bright ginger hair clashing horribly with a dark red t-shirt, gaping back at him.

For what seemed like half an age they stared at each other. Neither wanting to believe that the other was currently inhabiting the same small student pub in the wilds of middle England as they were.

"Weasley, what the hell are you doing here," he eventually demanded, deciding that in this instance accusation was the best form of defence.

Ron, clearly even more stunned than Draco seemed to take a few moments to organise his thoughts into something resembling coherency. "I'm a student," he said eventually. "But I could ask what you're doing here. After all you're the one who's… who's supposed to be dead. We saw them scrape your body off the road"

Draco weighed his options; he could either try to come up with a witty comeback, attempt to maintain a dignified silence while sticking his metaphoric finger in his equally metaphoric ears and pretending that Weasley didn't exist, or tell him the truth. His natural inclination was to select the first option, but given that, when it really came down to it, his ability to produce elegant retorts at a moment's notice didn't actually tally with his desire for said ability, he decided against it. The second option, while tempting, held the possible risk that the people around them might get the impression that they were engaged in some sort of lovers tiff and Draco was giving Ron 'the silent treatment'. It was an outcome that even under the direst threat he could not allow to have a chance of occurring. There was therefore only one thing he could do.

"Yes Weasley, I _was_ dead, but I got better."

"What?"

"You heard me."

Ron's expression had gone from shock to horrified perplexity. A fact that gave Draco some satisfaction. "But…but how could that…?"

"Wouldn't you like to know, Weasley?" he said, deciding to firmly grasp the other hand. Said grasp however began to feel slightly tenuous when Nagini, who until a few seconds ago had been behind the bar telling one, now highly disgruntled, lecturer from the Physics Department exactly how much more per annum her colleagues were earning than her, appeared beside him; a beaming smile on her face. Unable to bear the thought of Ronald Weasley finding out that the only reason he was currently stalking the earth, was because hell had deemed him to be a borderline case, he gestured to his infernal overseer. "This is Nagini, the Dark Lord's p…." As his mouth began to form the word 'pet' the smile on the demon's face went from beaming to downright dangerous. "I mean, er, former companion."

This slightly botched revelation failed to have the intended effect on Ron, who, instead of backing away in terror, was now looking at him as if he'd gone completely mad. "Don't be an idiot Malfoy, I saw Neville kill that bloody snake. He used Gryffindor's sword."

"Tell me about it," said Nagini cheerfully. "Stung like anything. I've still got the scar, you know. It's a new body and everything, but the mark just won't go away. I can show you if you like."

Ron wordlessly nodded in the fashion of somebody who's reached the conclusion that the entire world's gone completely insane.

Nagini ginned, lifted her top and proceeded to give the entire bar what could only be described as 'an eyeful'.

Draco sighed.

Several young men and a few young women stared in blatant lust.

Ron's jaw dropped.

"Bloody hell."

"You can tell that the thing had a nasty edge, can't you?" she said conversationally.

While his time in the pit had served to acclimatise him to things such as topless ex-succubae, Draco nevertheless found himself overwhelmed by a sudden urge to hide his face and vigorously deny any acquaintanceship.

-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-

Aziraphale closed the paperback edition of the Hobbit from which he'd just been reading aloud and looked meaningfully at the living room clock. "I do believe young sir that it's past your bedtime."

Bentley immediately adopted the most calculatedly sad face it was possible for a seven year old to effect. "Just another chapter," he said with a beseeching whine.

Aziraphale, not particularly skilled at persuading young children to do things they didn't want to do, looked helplessly at Anathema, who'd been watching the storytelling with a mixture of amusement and maternal fondness.

"Time for bed," she said, getting up from her slightly battered looking easy chair.

"Muuuum," Bentley wailed.

Anathema, clearly a follower of the no nonsense school of parenting, merely sighed and picked her son up. Bentley, realising that resistance was futile and bedtime imminent, didn't bother to struggle.

"Say good night to your uncle Aziraphale, Bentley."

"Night, night Uncle Azrifell," said Bentley, in the mournful tones of one sentenced to a terrible and hopeless fate.

"Good night Bentley."

As Anathema turned into the hallway a muffled yet triumphant voice sounded out from somewhere above their heads. "I think I've done it, Anathema."

And with that the lights went out.

There was a muted thud followed by a loud crash.

"Er, Anathema, I don't suppose that you could bring a torch up here."

Aziraphale, for whom the dark was no obstacle to sight, could see the resigned expression on Anathema's face. "I'll be there in a second. Sorry, Aziraphale I don't suppose you could look after Bentley for a few minutes."

"Of course, dear girl," he said warmly, wondering whether righting the fault himself would be polite or not. After all, Newt had seemed a bit downcast when the angel had 'fixed' the kettle two days ago.

"Mummy," said Bentley quietly. "The police aren't going to arrest daddy under the Terrorism Act again, are they?"

-0-0-

When the power in the bar went out, Nagini – at whom Ron was still staring at open mouthed – immediately took the step of banishing the patrons back out into the darkened Wilds of campus.

"You wouldn't believe how much lust gets generated by the average night time black out," she said conversationally as Draco continued to glare at Ronald Weasley's outline.

"So… so you're the… the thing bit my dad," said Ron, finally overcoming the shock of being flashed by a succubus and taking upon himself to loyally take up the small but vexing matter of his father receiving a venomous bite courtesy of the being who'd just been introduced to him.

"You're dad was Arthur Weasley, wasn't he?" Complete and utter darkness being no obstacle to those of a diabolical persuasion, she walked back behind the bar and proceeded to pour herself a nice neat drink of vodka.

"Took him ages to recover. The wound wouldn't stop bleeding."

"Yeah, anti-coagulants were all the rage back then. Of course, I'm going for neurotoxins at the moment."

Ron made a face. "What?"

"Yes I know what you're thinking, anything that acts on the brains cholinergic system has to be a bit old fashioned, but you have to admit that it's better than just squeezing your prey to death."

Thrown off balance once more Ron attempted to cling to the point of his dutiful outrage. "Look, I'm a bit… no, I'm a lot, angry about what you did to my dad and Harry."

"Yes, but your friend Neville did horribly discorporate me so I think that makes us about even."

"What about my dad?" he demanded.

Nagini gave a small exasperated hiss. "Would it make you feel any better to know that shortly after that incident Riddle made me eat Peter Pettigrew?"

In the dark of the bar both Draco and Ron blanched.

"I meant eat in a more literal sense. Had to regurgitate him alive, of course, which was a relief as I don't think I could have digested him. Don't think I've ever felt quite so nauseous. Although, if we're talking about perversions then Draco's aunt Bellatrix and her-"

"I don't think that he wants or needs to hear about Aunt Bellatrix," snapped Draco, abruptly cutting her off.

"I don't mind," said Ron, a note of eagerness suddenly entering his voice. "Really."

-0-0-

Adam had decided to forgo the blackout. As much as he usually liked to get into the spirit of things there were other issues that he needed to deal with.

Feeling a pang of embarrassment he took a deep breath and looked once more into the mirror.

"Hi Pepper, I was wondering if you wanted to go and watch Revenge of the Living Dead we me at the cinema you know as a sort of date kind of thing."

He shook his head. No that one definitely wasn't going to work. For one thing the only place Revenge of the Living Dead was playing within reasonable distance was the multiplex on the other side of Upper Tadfield and Pepper had been boycotting it ever since they'd decided to let the Newtrition Corporation provide the popcorn. The merest suggestion of patronising the areas only eight screen cinema was likely to send her into a diatribe on subject of the company's infamous decision to sell low-calory baby milk in several famine ridden areas of the globe.

"Hello Pep, I don't suppose that you want to go for a drink later. You know just me and you."

Ugh, definitely not that one either. It sounded, well, ever so slightly sleazy. You might as well go and add a lecherous wink. Besides, the fact that he and Pepper had gone for drinks alone together three times in the previous week, made it rather redundant anyway.

"PepperIthinkIlikeyouasmorethanafriendwillyougooutwithme."

Hmmm. Not too bad. A little cheesy perhaps. A little high school. But direct and honest nonetheless. The thing was that he seriously doubted that he could bring himself to get the words out in front of her, much less speak them in a measured and coherent fashion.

-0-0-

"I think I've got it," Newt shouted in a voice that contained far more confidence than previous experience warranted. "Just a fuse blown, er, I think."

Aziraphale suspected that 'just a blown fuse' could possibly make it onto the Understatement of the Year shortlist. Despite his angelic ability to see the unseeable, he couldn't quite fathom exactly how Newt had managed to short circuit the portion of the national grid supplying the Tadfield area while doing nothing more than attempting to install an extractor fan in the bathroom. It was really no wonder that MI5 had been sniffing around. One rather suspected that Newton Pulsifer's proficiency, or absence therefore, when it came to mundane technical tasks had its own special subsection in the Ineffable Plan.

"There that should…."

Aziraphale made a slightly clumsy-looking hand gesture.

The lights blinked back on

For several moments there was dumbfounded silence.

"…do it." The delight and wonderment that resounded in the last two words were enough to allay any guilt the angel might have had about lending a spot of divine assistance.

"Well done," he heard Anathema say. She'd know, of course, but Aziraphale was certain that she wouldn't spoil Newt's moment of triumph, however erroneously based.

"You can make the people from the electricity company go away, can't you Uncle Azzrifell?" said Bentley, a small note of worry in his voice.

Aziraphale gave the boy a comforting smile. "I'm sure I could persuade them to find something more suitable to do with their time." This was very true. If the entreaties to be more charitable and understand failed and projecting an aura of peace and well being failed. He knew that inviting them in and launching into an enthusiastic spiel about how having the Lord's presence in one's existence could really make a difference to one's outlook, would be sure to have them making their hasty excuses and beating a hasty retreat back to the company car.

It was a rather relieved Anathema who re-entered the sitting room.

_Thank you_, she mouthed at Aziraphale, before turning her attention back to her son.

"Come on Bentley, no more stalling, you've got a busy day tomorrow."

-0-0-

By the time the dim lights of the Tadfield campus bar came back on Ron found himself sitting on a wobbly bar stool, while Draco stood in a corner, ostensibly sulking, and the evil father biting snake woman with a penchant for indecent exposure drank neat vodka from the bottle and talked about the more amusing predilections of the late Lord Voldemort's former followers. He was certain however that the one about Professor Snape and the dyslexic incubus had to have been an exaggeration.

"…and then Duke Hastur, you know the tall, repulsive one with the holy relic dust snorting problem…."

"I thought that Duke Ligur?" said Ron, who was having difficulty keeping up with the names of hell's most infamous.

"No he's the short, repulsive one who got doused in holy water by the job stealing bastard. Anyway, Duke Hastur just told me that it was my task to make sure Draco stays off the straight and narrow and on the twisted and depraved, so here we both are."

"So let me get this straight. He's here because he isn't quite evil enough for hell as he is and needs to be corrupted a bit more." At the thought of this Ron couldn't help but give a small snigger.

Draco, clearly annoyed by the presence of the second youngest Weasley, scowled. "Hah, if you believe that you'll believe anything. Nagini and I are _really_ here to- Ouch." The reanimated Malfoy heir suddenly clutched his head and started to whimper.

"Yes, s'about it," said Nagini, voice finally starting to take on a hint of drunken slur. "Anyway, I've told you why we're here. What I want to know is what Harry Potter's best friend's doing at a Muggle university."

"Er…studying." Ron knew as soon as the word left his mouth that nobody was going to buy it. There are some lies that are too big to ever sound convincing.

"You haven't settled down with that self-righteous girl with the frizzy hair then?"

"What, Hermione, how…how d'you know about me and her?"

Nagini gave a smile that radiated smug pride. "I always keep my ears open. Well, figuratively, of course, I don't actually have any to speak of when I'm in snake form. Besides, two of Riddle's followers were running a betting pool on whether you or Harry'd be the first to 'get into the bushy-haired Mudblood's knickers'."

Ron could almost feel his skin crawl at the thought of Voldemort's filthy lackeys placing wagers on something so… so personal. "How were they planning to find out?" he asked, not quite sure that he wanted to know the answer.

She shrugged. "Kidnap her and dose her with Veritaserum, I suppose. Though the whole thing got disbanded after Goyle overheard the Carrows planning ways to get the three of you under the Imperius curse and rig the contest.

He shook his head. "That's sick. That's really, really sick."

"Well, it was an evil organisation. Wouldn't have been sent to whisper in Riddle's ear if they hadn't been. Not that whispering in Riddle's ear did any good of course. Dismissed every diabolic and strategically sensible idea I had, the bastard. I mean, if you'd been him, would you have insisted on waiting until the end of the Triwizard Tournament to give Harry the portkey, because I certainly wouldn't. As for the pre-kill gloating, what kind of idiot does that?"

"But he was-"

"Pathologically incompetent, I know."

"I was going to say deranged."

"Yes, but when it comes to Dark Lords that's practically one of the job requirements. Most sane people don't tend to massacre hundreds of relatively innocent people for the sake of petty revenge."

Ron had to agree on that point. Still, the fact that she could talk about the whole thing in much the same blasé manner a Hogwarts student might bemoan a really gruelling potions class bothered him. "It doesn't bother you, what you did, does it?" he said, realising as soon as the words left his mouth that saying things like that to an aeons old creature of the pit was possibly a bit stupid.

Nagini shrugged. "I'm a demon, it was my job. Personally I would have rather been back in the Seventh Circle. It was difficult to keep up with things while I was slithering around and trying to convince Riddle that the path to world domination didn't lie in placing bits of his soul in the most obvious objects available."

"You're really bitter about that, aren't you," observed Ron, in tones that were rather more sarcastic than were probably sensible when conversing with creatures of the Netherworld.

"Don't get her started, Weasley," muttered Draco, his tones so baleful that Ron was almost tempted to feel sorry for him. Almost. "I've been listening to that rant since I got killed."

Much to his own disgust, Ron's 'almost sympathy' transformed into 'outright pity'.


End file.
